Kenyan man released from prison after ten years

• Ali Kololo has been released from prison after a ten-year.
• Effort to overturn his conviction for the murder of a British man.
• According to Ali Kololo’s wife, Jude Tebbutt, Ali Kololo is not guilty of the crime.

After a ten-year effort to get his conviction overturned, a Kenyan who had been found guilty in a case involving the murder of a British man has been released from prison.

A top Metropolitan police officer who assisted the Kenyan inquiry “omitted vital forensic evidence” in the Ali Kololo trial, the reputed media outlet revealed in 2022.

According to Ali Kololo’s wife, Jude Tebbutt, Ali Kololo is not guilty of the crime.

In April, his conviction is anticipated to be legally overturned.

In advance of the decision, Ali Kololo has been released on a bond of 100,000 shillings ($790; £659) during an appeal hearing at the Kenyan High Court on Monday.

In 2011, while David Tebbutt and his wife Jude were vacationing at a remote resort on the Kenyan coast, they were attacked. Jude was held hostage for six months in neighboring Somalia while David was killed.

Only until her adult son Olly arranged a ransom agreement was she freed.

Ali Kololo, a father of two, was found guilty of armed robbery in 2013 and given the death penalty. Afterwards, his death sentence was reduced to life in prison.

Ali Kololo, who has been detained at Mombasa’s Shimo La Tewa high security prison for more than ten years, joined the appeal hearing at the Kenyan High Court in Malindi on Monday via video link.

“Ali has suffered in prison for 11 years, the victim of a terrible injustice, while David Tebbutt’s killers remain free,” his lawyer, Alfred Olaba says.

“The case against him was weak and riddled with inconsistencies from the start.”

In June 2022, the reputed media outlet revealed that the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which had been investigating Det Ch Insp Neil Hibberd’s role in the case since June 2018, had concluded that “had the officer still been serving he would have had a case to answer for gross misconduct”.

A serving officer might be fired for gross misconduct, but Mr. Hibberd retired in 2017.

Neil Hibberd was a crucial witness for the prosecution, and the magistrate used his testimony as one of the determining elements in Ali Kololo’s conviction.

Mr Hibberd “absolutely disagrees with the [IOPC] findings”, his lawyer told the reputed media outlet in 2022.

Before the appeal court hearing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Kenya confirmed his position that Ali Kololo should never have been convicted and sentenced to death, as the trial judge’s findings were “not based on the evidence on record” and were “based on hearsay testimony”.

According to the DPP, Det Ch Insp Neil Hibberd’s testimony regarding the arrest and vital shoe-print evidence connecting Ali Kololo to the crime scene was “pure hearsay evidence.”

Maya Foa, director of the justice organisation Reprieve, said that the release of Ali Kololo has sparked an enormous wave of relief.

“Ali has waited years for this moment. Everyone at Reprieve who has worked on his case is overjoyed to see him released from prison and reunited with his family at long last.

“But we should not lose sight of everything that has been taken from him as the result of a deeply unfair trial. It is a tragedy that he has spent 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.”

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