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Stowaway story falls from the Sky website

By Amina wako November 21st, 2019 2 min read

An investigative article by British broadcaster Sky News that had “revealed” the identity of the stowaway who fell off a Kenya Airways plane in London seems to have been quietly pulled down.

A click on the link on Thursday directed users to a dead page with the message: “Page not found. We’re sorry. The page you are looking for cannot be found. You may have followed a broken or outdated link, or there may be an error on our site.”

The media house offered no explanation for the development. Nairobi News has contacted Sky News for the comment on why they pulled down the article.

FACEBOOK ACCOUNT

A screenshot of the dead page.

The Sky News report on November 12 had identified the dead man as Paul Manyasi and published his pictures pulled from a Facebook account.

In the story, the family of Manyasi alleged it was their son on board the Kenya Airways flight from Kenya to London and worked for a cleaning services company -Colnet Limited Kenya- contracted to work at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Kenyan authorities and the cleaning company disputed the report, saying the man named in the report was not the dead stowaway.

However, a day after the investigative story went viral the father of Manyasi told a local media house that his son was alive and in prison.

Issac Beti claimed his son was alive and said their son’s name was Cedric Shivonje, who he said had been arrested for defilement and locked up at the Industrial Area Remand Prison in Nairobi.

Kenya Prisons Service spokesman Dixon Mwakazi confirmed that Shivonje was remanded at the Nairobi Medium Prison, Industrial Area.

DCI detectives later visited Industrial Area prison where they interrogated and recorded a statement from Shivonje. DCI boss George Kinoti confirmed they had recorded a statement from Shivonje.

The Daily Nation team met up with Shivonje at Kamiti prison, to where he was moved from Industrial Area prison because for security reasons. The story is published in today’s edition.

Today’s Daily Nation.

Photographed while handcuffed, Shivonje said the pictures published in the Sky report were ripped from his Facebook account.

According to Nation, the flight records show that the plane had been to South Africa before taking off from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for London on the early morning of June 30, 2019.

No family has so far claimed the body of the stowaway who fell in a London compound.