Kenya Airport Police Unit (KAPU) has been put on the spot after a Kenyan woman and her Iranian husband mysteriously disappeared at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport minutes before they boarded a plane to Iran via Turkey.
Stela Waithera and her husband Ahmed Golabi reportedly went missing last Friday, September 24, 2021.
Some Immigration and airport staff familiar with the couple claim that the couple checked in at the airport, got cleared, and were only waiting to board the plane before they vanished.
Stella’s parent’s Samuel Njunue Mugwe and Esther Wambui Njunue claim that their daughter and son-in-law did not board the plane to Turkey nor returned home. The parents also revealed the two can’t be reached as their phones have been switched off.
The Turkish airlines and the Iranian embassy in Nairobi have also confirmed that the couple never left the country.
Waithera’s father told the People Daily that the police and the JKIA officials have done little to help them trace the couple. Mugwe claims that the police have only been taking them in rounds without actual help.
They claim that the police and the airport authorities at first promised to help them trace the couple’s whereabouts using CCTV footage but they later changed their minds and subsequently chased them away from the precincts.
The family is now hoping that their daughter and her husband are still alive after they received reports from Gatanga MP Ngugi Nduati that the couple had been arrested by the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU).
“But then even if it is the ATPU that arrested them, why can’t the police tell us so?
Why are they keeping it a secret? Why can’t they take them to court and charge them instead of keeping them incommunicado?” Mugwe questions as reported by the People Daily.
In their efforts to find the couple, the family has now engaged the services of a lawyer, Standley Kangahi who has since moved to court to complete the government to produce the couple.
Waithera and her husband are based in Tehran, Iran’s capital city, and had come to the country to visit Waithera’s father who has been ill for some time, according to reports.
Following their disappearance, the family is now asking the Kenyan government to tell them why it is holding Waithera and her husband.
