By Margaret Janelle Hutchinson
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

CARACAS, Venezuela – Kenyan authorities have charged the first secretary of the Venezuelan embassy with the murder of the South American country’s acting ambassador, a crime police believe was motivated by a battle over embassy leadership, though allegations of a drug-trafficking scheme have also surfaced.

Dwight Sagaray was charged in court with the murder of acting Venezuelan ambassador Olga Fonseca. He pled not guilty.

Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, Sagaray’s friend and an alleged co-conspirator who has gone into hiding, was also charged with murder.

Prosecutor Tabitha Ouya said the two suspects strangled Fonseca in her home, a mere 12 days after her arrival in Kenya. She said others were also involved in the killing, but did not name them.

Judge Florence Muchemi issued an arrest warrant for Hassan and remanded Sagaray into custody until his bail application is heard. Venezuelan officials previously agreed to waive Sagaray’s diplomatic immunity so he could be charged.

Fonseca was found strangled in the embassy’s official residence. She reported to Kenya on July 15 to replace former ambassador Gerardo Carillo Silva, who left his posting in Kenya and soon faced allegations of sexual harassment by Kenyan male workers from the embassy residence.

Kenyan nationals employed at the embassy told police at the time of Sagaray’s arrest last week that relations with the new ambassador had soured quickly after her arrival because she had ordered staff who lodged sexual-harassment complaints against her predecessor to withdraw them. When they refused to retract their allegations, Fonseca fired them, local media reported.

Former ambassador Carrillo told the Venezuelan newspaper Ultimas Noticias that five or six months after Saragary’s arrival in Kenya in July 2010, the situation at the embassy grew tense because “he refused to recognize my authority.”

“I warned twice about the problem by phone: one (call) at the end of last year and another in February when the situation became unsustainable. And other diplomats of the embassy were witnesses to that,” Carrillo was quoted as saying.

Carillo said he left Kenya on May 19 after receiving instructions from the Foreign Ministry to travel to Venezuela. On May 23, Carrillo said, he received a call from Nairobi and was told that a news article appeared in which he was accused of sexual harassment.

“I reject the accusation of sexual harassment. That isn’t true,” Carrillo told Ultimas Noticias. Carrillo said he had been working at the embassy since 2005. “During those seven years nothing ever happened. Why after my departure do they make it seem that I fled?”

Police said they believe the motive behind Fonseca’s murder was a battle for the embassy’s top job, but allegations surfaced that officials at the scandal-plagued post in Nairobi may have been trafficking drugs under cover of diplomatic immunity, Kenyan media reported.

According to the information they had received, the police linked some of the embassy staff, a few locals and some foreigners in drug trafficking. The sources said the drugs were being brought into the country as diplomatic parcels which, under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, are not subjected to security checks.

For more information, please see:

The Associated Press – Venezuelan charged in diplomat’s killing in Kenya  – 06 August 2012

Fox News – Venezuelan charged with death of diplomat in Kenya – 06 August 2012

The Guardian –  Venezuelan official accused of killing diplomatic rival at Kenyan embassy – 06 August 2012

LA Times –  Venezuelan diplomat charged with murdering the ambassador to Kenya  –  06 August 2012

The Star –  Narcotics drugs cited in envoy’s murder  –  06 August 2012