Mystery of a dead envoy and a missing suspect more than a decade on

Olga Fonseca Giménez de Pimental, Venezuela’s newly posted ambassador, was murdered on July 27, 2012 in Nairobi.

But Mohammed Ahmed Hassan, the man named by witnesses as a prime architect of the murder, has never been traced.

In July 2012, Kenya’s politics was on the boil. With just eight months to the first General Election under the new Constitution, the country was consumed by speculation and ruthless coalition-building, with the jostling for power growing fiercer by the day, and  at this stage, every headline screamed politics.

But on the night of July 27, that feverish political noise was pierced and punctuated by a murder most unlikely, and visited upon a figure least expected.

In the leafy calm of Nairobi’s Runda estate, a neighbourhood associated with safety and privilege, the lifeless body of Olga Fonseca Giménez de Pimental, Venezuela’s newly posted ambassador, was discovered.

She had been murdered exactly twelve days after her arrival in the capital.
Her murder stunned the nation and rattled diplomatic circles, making it an international scandal that would cast a pale shadow over Kenya’s reputation as a stable host for international missions.

It became an unprecedented cold-blooded murder of a top foreign envoy, the first ever of its kind on Kenyan soil.

Curiously, and what would puzzle investigators, for days since her arrival in Nairobi she was booked at a hotel in Gigiri and not the official embassy residence in Runda.

And as it would turn out, Olga Fonseca, 57, would only occupy her official residence for 48 hours before she was found strangled in her house.

An autopsy conducted by head of forensics at the Ministry of Health, Dr Johansen Oduor, and pathologists Dr Kizzy Shako and Dr Andrew Gachie concluded that Olga Fonseca died by strangulation.

“The deceased had a serious amount of blood on the back, there was a telephone wire cord on the neck and ankles, five meters long,” read the autopsy.

As the script would later unfold, it became apparent that Olga Fonseca boarded her flight to Nairobi not knowing that she was stepping into a chancery poisoned by fierce power struggles and deep divisions that would claim her life in the most gruesome manner. Her presence, as it would appear, was far from needed in Nairobi.

An acting diplomat in charge of the chancery was not ready to surrender the reins of power, aided by a shadowy figure who operated inside the mission as though it were his own. Olga Fonseca became became a top target.

At the same time, upon her arrival, it was widely rumoured within and outside the precincts of the embassy that cocaine trafficking had taken root, with some corrupt officials taking advantage of diplomatic trappings to move drugs at will.

Quickly, this became another avenue for speculation that the new envoy may have arrived to interfere with such networks, but these claims were dismissed by Venezuelan authorities.

Investigations into the murder would suck in five top suspects, and trial judge Roselyn Korir preciding the case convicted four men, with one still at large to date, his whereabouts a mystery.

Those convicted are Dwight Asprubal Sagaray Covault, a Venezuelan diplomat then acting as the head of the chancery, and three Kenyans namely: Ahmed Mujivane Omido who claimed to be in real estate business and lived in Nairobi West, Alex Sifuna Wanyonyi who claimed to own a hardware business and lived along Kangundo Road, and Moses Kiprotich Kalya, an ex police officer and politician.

The shadowy figure who has never been traced to date but named by witnesses as a prime architect of the murder is Mohammed Ahmed Hassan.

In 2023, the four, now behind bars, lodged an appeal at the Court of Appeal challenging their convictions and 20-year sentences, but to their chagrin it was dismissed.

In a unanimous judgment delivered in Nairobi, Justices Abida Ali-Aroni, Lydia Achode, and John Mativo dismissed the four men’s appeals in full, describing the 20-year sentences imposed by the High Court as “very lenient,” though leaving them undisturbed because the State had not sought an enhancement.

The bench concluded that the circumstantial and confession evidence formed a complete chain, and that Sagaray and Mohammed stood out as “mastermind (s)” who drew in the other three.

The Court of Appeal delivered the judgment on March 7 this year.

Just who exactly is Mohammed, and why has it taken ages to establish his whereabouts? Who is protecting him?

Court records portray Mohammed as Sagaray’s close associate, who was so embedded around the embassy that staff sometimes mistook him for an employee.

He moved in and out of the ambassador’s residence at will and drove a RAV4 vehicle bearing diplomatic plates.

The Standard contacted the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Venezuelan Embassy in Nairobi to enquire on the status of the investigations and whether there was cooperation between the two countries to find justice, but neither party had responded by the time of going to press.

Claims that Mohammed is in the country and enjoying protection from highly placed State officials have surfaced more than once, but The Standard could not independently verify the claims.

During the trial, witness statements painted Mohammed as a man of means with deep connections within the Kenyan government and certain diplomatic circles.

Beyond the courtroom, little is known about Mohammed’s life. Other than the repeated references to him as a doctor, the public record does not establish where he came from, where he practiced medicine, or what else he did apart from moving in diplomatic circles. 

Inspector Boniface Mule, then attached to the Nairobi Area CID headquarters , testified that on August 6, 2012 he received information that Mohammed was hiding at his mother’s house in South C, in the city. However, when they got there, they could not find him.

His father, Ahmed Mohammed Hassan, testified that Mohammed had been admitted to Sindh Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan, where he stayed from 1998 to 2011, a period of 13 years. According to him, Mohammed never completed his medical degree, and eventually left home, after which the family lost track of his whereabouts.

“He moved around as an impostor diplomat, calling himself Dr Mohammed and for sure, he was a character and a half. We struggled to piece together his true profile,” said an investigator who probed the case.

Despite a warrant of arrest hanging over his head, and the then Police Spokesperson Erick Kiraithe publicly imploring Kenyans to volunteer information about him, Mohammed’s whereabouts have remained a mystery.

Reportedly, according to some of the testimonies in court, he was seen at the embassy at around midnight on the night Fonseca was killed, this despite being labelled as “persona non grata” at the compound.

Despite the grave accusations, Mohammed has never faced trial and “remains at large.”

The court said meetings linked to the murder plot unfolded in the days and hours before the killing at Java (Gigiri) and a spot called “Magis,” with accounts that Mohammed left briefly and returned at about 12.30am “having changed his clothes.”

Call data placed one of the key suspects in contact with Mohammed 11 times on July 27, the day Fonseca’s body was found. The judges treated those meetings and communications as part of a common plan to eliminate the ambassador.

Sagaray unequivocally acknowledged knowing Mohammed and said he sometimes “would occasionally stay” at his house, but denied any murder plot and insisted he did not see Mohammed on the night of the murder.

He maintained that Mohammed portrayed himself as a Kenyan diplomat and was friendly with others tied to the embassy. The court recorded those denials but, weighing them against physical exhibits and witness testimony, found them unpersuasive.

For several years after the ambassador’s murder, while out on bond, Sagaray tried to reinvent himself, as if to bury the old image. He took up a career as a gospel musician, preacher, and philanthropist calling himself Iguassu AC, appearing on both TV and radio interviews across local media stations. 

Some platforms branded him as a special mzungu who could sing in different local dialects, including Kikuyu, Luhya, and Kamba. Most of the time, he deliberately downplayed his diplomat past to conceal his history, until the wheels of justice finally caught up with him and led to his conviction.

In their appeal, the four behind bars attacked virtually every plank of the High Court’s verdict, arguing that the case rested on shaky circumstantial strands, and that a key confession by the fourth appellant, Moses Kiprotich Kalya, was retracted and unreliable; that call records proved little; and that investigators ignored exculpatory leads.

They also revived Sagaray’s jurisdictional challenge, insisting he enjoyed diplomatic immunity at the time.

The Court of Appeal rejected each point, affirming that Venezuela had stripped Sagaray of diplomatic status and cancelled his diplomatic passport through communications with Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, which allowed his prosecution. 

“Immunity belongs not to an individual but to the sending State,” the court stated.

On the confession, the court upheld the trial judge’s decision to admit Kiprotich’s statement after a “trial within a trial,” finding it voluntary.

On the evidentiary standard, the bench recited the classic test for circumstantial cases and held that the totality of embassy staff accounts of hostility and control struggles, sightings of Mohammed inside the residence, the late-night meetings, and the call logs pointed firmly to the appellants and “none else within all human probability.”

The court expressly tied Sagaray and Mohammed together as architects of the plan, with Omido recruiting Wanyonyi and Kiprotich.

Ambassador Olga Fonseca had arrived in Nairobi to replace Gerardo Carrillo-Silva, the Venezuelan envoy who had been abruptly recalled to Caracas after being accused of sexual harassment by local embassy staff.

His departure left a vacuum at the chancery, and into that space stepped Sagaray, then First Secretary, who assumed the role of chargé d’affaires and effectively ran the embassy while Caracas scrambled to send a replacement.

By the time Fonseca landed, the chancery was already a divided and fractured house, with some staff said to have petitioned against Carrillo-Silva’s alleged conduct.

Sagaray, suddenly wielding authority he had never enjoyed before, was reluctant to let it go.

For the months he was in charge, Sagaray controlled embassy operations but leaned heavily on Mohammed, the mysterious Kenyan businessman who was neither a diplomat nor an employee but frequented the mission with unusual ease.

It was into this unsettled environment that Fonseca walked, determined to reassert order, but unaware of just how bitter the resistance would be.

Barely had she unpacked and settled into her new posting before Olga Fonseca was found cold in the most gruesome manner.

The property that housed the Venezuelan ambassador's residence was owned by politician Johnstone Muthama, who at some point testified in the case, revealing how Olga once opened up to him, expressing fears for her life.

Evidence of Francis Muigai Mwangi, the official ambassador’s driver, indicated that upon Olga’s arrival at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, he was instructed by Sagaray to take her to a hotel and not the ambassador’s residence, which the deceased objected to.

But because he wielded immense power at the time, Sagaray persuaded her, and she stayed at Gigiri’s Tribe Hotel for a couple of days. 

Sagaray suggested that he took it upon himself to pick Olga from the airport, as the Second Secretary, Jennifer, and the embassy’s protocol officer had refused to do so. He further claimed to have taken her to the Tribe Hotel as the official residence was being prepared.

To further augment his point, Sagaray said that because of the sex scandals, he feared Olga was not going to have a good reception and therefore he needed to shield her from the chaos. He also cited an issue with the tenancy of the embassy, as the landlord had wanted to terminate it arising from the sexual harassment claims, and therefore he needed to sort such matters out first.

Evidence shared by several employees of the embassy at the time showed that Sagaray, who was acting, was unhappy with the posting of Olga as the head of the mission. Witnesses portrayed a picture of hostility that faced the new envoy.

In the office, witnesses said there was a clear struggle between the two of them over who was in charge, including who was to control the finances of the embassy. Both wrote to Commercial Bank of Africa, claiming to be the rightful signatory to the embassy accounts.

The court heard that in the midst of the power struggles, Mohammed reportedly told the domestic staff that he would ensure Kenyan authorities rejected Olga's deployment.

To apparently deflect the spotlight shone on him, Sagaray further told the court that on July 26, between 4 and 5pm, few hours to the murder, he had a doctor’s appointment at Sarit Centre, and after he was done, he left for Parklands Campus at around 7pm. An hour later, he claimed, he went to his house at Runda until the next day when he heard the news of the death.

In cross-examination, Sagaray confirmed that Mohammed’s clothes, documents, and photographs were found in his house. He stated that even before he became the First Secretary, Mohammed would hang around the embassy.

He denied having discussed with Mohammed any scheme to kill the deceased, was not aware of any such plan, and had nothing to do with the murder.

On his part, Ahmed Mujivane Omido said he knew Mohammed as he would see him at the mosque in Nairobi West, where they prayed together. He said Mohammed used to drive a silver RAV4 with diplomatic number plates.

But even with the conviction, over the years a hanging puzzle has remained- one man, most heavily implicated in the planning of a diplomat’s murder and who should have faced trial, has never been brought to book: Mohammed Ahmed Hassan, whose name repeatedly surfaced in court.

Judge Korir stated in her judgement: “To date, the warrants of arrest against Mohammed remain unexecuted. Justice demands that the said suspect at large be traced, arrested and charged. To this end, this court directs the Deputy Registrar of the Court to certify this judgment to the Director of Public Prosecutions for action,”

The story of the late diplomat Olga Fonseca, for many, read more like a chilling plot of a spy thriller. But this was no fiction. It was a murder most foul, startling and shaking both Nairobi and Caracas with sheer intensity.