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Kenya: Plane needed to rescue Garissa victims was being used to carry Police Chiefs Family
http://www.africaeagle.com/2015/04/kenya-plane-needed-to-rescue-garissa.html
A Kenyan police chief has sparked outrage after he admitted that a plane needed to take commandos to the scene of the terror attack on Garissa University earlier this month was being used to fly his family home from a holiday.
Col Rogers Mbithi, the chief of the police's air wing, said the plane was sent to Mombasa on a training mission but stopped on the way back to pick up his daughter-in-law and her two sons.
"There is nothing to hide. It came back with [my daughter-in-law] and two small children. I took full responsibility and explained that," Col Mbithi told reporters
The Cessna 208B, the only plane said to be big enough to transport the elite Recce squad and their equipment, left Nairobi for Mombasa at 7.30am.
It only returned to the capital at 11.30am, six hours after the attack began and more than five hours after the Recce squad had been placed on standby to respond.
It departed Nairobi for Garissa with the commandos on board at 12.30pm.
When they arrived, they were briefed and entered the hostel at 5pm, killing the remaining terrorists within half an hour.
But the long delay in breaking the siege has been blamed for allowing the gunmen to discover students who sought places to hide after the initial assault, resulting in a large number of deaths.
A total of 148 people were confirmed killed and 100 injured in the attack by four al-Shabaab gunmen that began at dawn on April 2.
President Uhuru Kenyatta's government has been criticised for apparently failing to learn the lessons on the September 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in which resulted in at least 67 deaths, and failing to act on intelligence that a university would be targeted.
Joseph Boinett, Kenya's police chief, has been forced to defend the fact that the first plane sent by the government to Garissa, 90 miles from the border with Somalia, was carrying himself and the Interior Cabinet Secretary rather than the Recce squad.
A source close to the elite commandos claimed the government was more concerned with PR than ending the attack, but Mr Boinett said the plane which carried him did not have the space to transport the whole squad.
Pictures since removed from the Instagram picture sharing website show Ndanu Munene Mbithi, named in local reports as Col Mbithi's daughter-in-law, "chilling" on the steps of a police plane with an unknown friend on what appears to be two separate occasions.
Col Mbithi told the Nation that the earlier trip had nothing to do with the Recce squad's delayed arrival in Garissa.
"If they were late it was not because of the aircraft. It arrived from Mombasa at 11.30am and waited for them for an hour. The pilots even had time to take coffee while awaiting the Recce team," he said.
Col Rogers Mbithi, the chief of the police's air wing, said the plane was sent to Mombasa on a training mission but stopped on the way back to pick up his daughter-in-law and her two sons.
"There is nothing to hide. It came back with [my daughter-in-law] and two small children. I took full responsibility and explained that," Col Mbithi told reporters
The Cessna 208B, the only plane said to be big enough to transport the elite Recce squad and their equipment, left Nairobi for Mombasa at 7.30am.
It only returned to the capital at 11.30am, six hours after the attack began and more than five hours after the Recce squad had been placed on standby to respond.
It departed Nairobi for Garissa with the commandos on board at 12.30pm.
When they arrived, they were briefed and entered the hostel at 5pm, killing the remaining terrorists within half an hour.
But the long delay in breaking the siege has been blamed for allowing the gunmen to discover students who sought places to hide after the initial assault, resulting in a large number of deaths.
A total of 148 people were confirmed killed and 100 injured in the attack by four al-Shabaab gunmen that began at dawn on April 2.
President Uhuru Kenyatta's government has been criticised for apparently failing to learn the lessons on the September 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in which resulted in at least 67 deaths, and failing to act on intelligence that a university would be targeted.
Joseph Boinett, Kenya's police chief, has been forced to defend the fact that the first plane sent by the government to Garissa, 90 miles from the border with Somalia, was carrying himself and the Interior Cabinet Secretary rather than the Recce squad.
A source close to the elite commandos claimed the government was more concerned with PR than ending the attack, but Mr Boinett said the plane which carried him did not have the space to transport the whole squad.
Pictures since removed from the Instagram picture sharing website show Ndanu Munene Mbithi, named in local reports as Col Mbithi's daughter-in-law, "chilling" on the steps of a police plane with an unknown friend on what appears to be two separate occasions.
Col Mbithi told the Nation that the earlier trip had nothing to do with the Recce squad's delayed arrival in Garissa.
"If they were late it was not because of the aircraft. It arrived from Mombasa at 11.30am and waited for them for an hour. The pilots even had time to take coffee while awaiting the Recce team," he said.
