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Shabani Malekela is dangerous, senior Prisons official claims
2008-04-20 11:13:08
By Mbena Mwanatongoni
Ex-jailbird Shabani Malekela who is planning to write a book on his life in prison is described by a senior prisons officer as a very dangerous prisoner.
``I cannot believe Shabani Malekela will not go back to banditry. He is a habitual criminal,`` so says Assistant Commissioner of Prisons (ACP) Mtiga Omari.
ACP Omari was officer-in-charge of Iringa Prison where Malekela successfully broke the fortified jail walls.
Malekela himself claims that he never committed the offence although he was found guilty of it.
He believes his case was a trumped up charge by his brother from fears that he would reveal his poaching business to relevant law enforcing agencies.
Describing the former prisoner, ACP Omari says: ``Shabani Malekela is a character of his own. He was always quiet, calm, agile and shrewd.
These are indicators of someone who is hiding his true identity. And one who hides his identity is plotting.”
The prisons officer says that Malekela escaped a number of times from different jails.
``His first escape was from Isanga Prison in Dodoma. It was easy for him to exit the jail walls there because he was entrusted with work in the prison dispensary, allowing him free movement from here and there.
How he made it in other jails has always remained a baffle to many. He must have walked all the way from Isanga to Iringa where he was rearrested and jailed again,`` he said.
Incidentally Malekela had taken a one-year stint in medicine while studying at Mvumi Hospital. According to him his father, the late Athumani Malekela who was himself a medical doctor, had secured a slot for his child at the hospital so that he could undergo a four-year Rural Medical Assistant (RMA) course.
The intelligent student left the course after only one year because he was lured into a completely different profession, this time poaching of ivory tusks in Ruaha and Selous Game Reserves with his late brother Mbossa Malekela.
He was in this new engagement for five years before quitting after he and his brother disagreed over disbursement of some money to Shabani to start his own business.
Malekela had earlier told this newspaper that it took him five days to make it to Iringa from Dodoma where Isanga prison is located.
He did most of the tiresome walking during the day and night after brief stops for a rest; a testing journey that had exhausted him and which he feared could have cost his life.
Continues ACP Omari: ``Before his re-arrest, Malekela is believed to have stabbed to death an adulterer. The story went like this: It was at night that he reached his home village and went straight to his house.
Upon knocking on the door and identifying himself, his wife told the man beside her that the knocker was indeed her husband.
``Whether that was true or not is not my business. But according to that story the adulterer rushed out only to face the knife from the fugitive jailbird who vanished into darkness.
The case was brought to court but dismissed on grounds related to lack of evidence.``
How was it possible for Malekela and colleagues to break jail, he responds: ``He must have had help from his agents. It is like a circle.
Any armed robber does not have a ready market for whatever he gets in his robbery.
They normally take their proceeds to agents who in turn sell them and retain a certain amount of money accrued from the sale as a commission to the robber.
``I am highly convinced it must have been the agents who must have facilitated the escapes of Malekela from the jails,`` remarks the prisons officer, without elaborating how these sponsors facilitated the breaks.
Malekela had said that he hatched an escape after extensively establishing the weaknesses of prison warders. ``It is their laxity that inspired my plans, which were well executed, save for the last one.``
The second escape from Iringa Prison left almost everyone in awe. ``And instead of going to his home village he went deep into forests.
We actually caught up with him near Manyoni. How he traversed the long route and in the wilderness, I cannot guess and I do not think I will ever understand,`` ACP Omari says.
On whether Malekela had any advocacy qualities, he says: ``Very much so. He had what you can easily term as convincing powers.
It is perhaps because of his lean little body coupled with his ease, quietness, soft but penetrating looks that factored these powers.``
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