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Mwapachu distances family from slain gangster
2005-12-30 09:49:56
By Guardian Correspondent, Tanga
Tanga Urban MP Bakari Mwapachu says he is not related to the suspected robber shot dead by police in Muheza earlier this week.
Speaking by telephone on Wednesday from Dodoma where he is attending a parliamentary session, Mwapachu said he and his family had nothing to do with the suspect.
He was responding to rumours that he was related to the slain suspected gangster.
Mwapachu, who is the outgoing Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, said he had contacted his relatives in Tanga who went to the Muheza District Hospital mortuary in the company of police officers to identify the dead suspect who was allegedly popularly known as ’’Mwapachu’’.
’’They saw the body and were emphatic that he was not a member of the Mwapachu clan. It seems that Mwapachu was not his real name.
He was probably using it to mask his real identity,’’ he said.
Mwapachu’s younger brother, Jabe, had earlier told this reporter outside the mortuary that the suspect was not their relative.
’’We’ve seen the body. He’s not our relative…in fact, we don’t know who he is,’’ he said.
A police officer who accompanied members of the Mwapachu family to Muheza District Hospital said the suspect was identified as ’’Mwapachu’’ by an informant who tipped the police off about a robbery planned by a gang of which the dead man was a member.
’’It seems that the informant knew the gangsters fairly well and that was why we did not doubt him when he identified one of them as Mwapachu,’’ said the officer, who did not want to be named.
Tanga Regional Police Commander Faith Amour said on Tuesday that two gangsters were shot dead in an exchange of fire with police in Muheza on Monday, shortly after the suspects had disembarked from a minibus that had arrived from Korogwe.
She named the two men as Hassan Mjeshi from Mazinde, Korogwe, and Mwapachu, a Tanga City resident.
The suspects were challenged by police to surrender, but they pulled out guns instead and shot at the officers, who returned fire, killing them on the spot.
Police sources said the two were part of a gang that had planned to rob a wholesale shop in Muheza.
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