The High Court in Mombasa has set free 25 former Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for deserting service. The men, drawn from the Kenya Navy, were convicted by a Court Martial sitting at Mtongwe Naval Base after being found guilty of leaving the force between 2007 and 2008.
The ruling ends a legal battle that began with their convictions around 2014 and has moved through the High Court and the Court of Appeal. Reports on the latest decision indicate that the court identified critical legal defects in the earlier proceedings and raised broader questions about how military law was applied in the case.
Background of the desertion charges
The former servicemen left their naval stations in 2007 and 2008 and took up work with private American security firms that deployed personnel to conflict zones including Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and other parts of the Middle East. Military authorities treated their departure as desertion, arguing that they had not been formally discharged and therefore remained subject to military discipline.
The men maintained that they had resigned and that the charges were defective, including claims that they were tried under provisions of the Kenya Defence Forces Act that came into force after they had already left.
A Court Martial at Mtongwe convicted them of desertion and imposed life sentences. Among those named in earlier proceedings were Jeffrey Okuri Pepela, Gabriel Kirigha Chawana, Reid Nyamweya, Samuel Kimani Onesmus, Japheth Muriithi, Ashford Chabari and Polycarp Nyairo, along with others from the same group of 25.
Earlier court decisions
In August 2015, High Court Judge Martin Muya allowed their appeals. He held that the prosecution had not proved desertion beyond reasonable doubt, found that the evidence supported only the lesser offence of absence without leave, and ruled that the time already spent in custody was sufficient punishment.
The judge set the convictions and life sentences aside and ordered the men released. Relatives celebrated outside court at the time.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions appealed. In March 2024, a Court of Appeal bench comprising Justices Agnes Murgor, Mumbi Ngugi and George Odunga set aside the 2015 High Court judgment, citing deficiencies in how the appeals had been handled, and ordered that the appeals be reheard by a different High Court judge.
That order returned the men to legal uncertainty nearly two decades after the original events.
The October 2026 decision
The fresh High Court hearing has now resulted in their acquittal. According to reporting by the Daily Nation and The Standard, the court freed the 25 former soldiers and brought the protracted proceedings to a close.
The outcome again turns on the application of military law to personnel who left the service years earlier and on whether the elements of desertion, as opposed to absence without leave, were properly established.
The case has drawn attention to the tension between military discipline and the rights of individuals who claim to have exited the forces, as well as to the severity of life sentences imposed by courts martial for desertion in the absence of active wartime service by the individuals concerned. With the High Court’s latest ruling, the former Navy personnel are no longer under the life sentences imposed at Mtongwe.