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Ugandan who fled home country after killing 19-year-old lover arrested in Nairobi

By Nyaboga Kiage September 14th, 2023 2 min read

A Ugandan national who has been on the run after he confessed to killing his 19-year-old girlfriend has been arrested in Kenya.

Mr Mathew Kireba, a medical doctor who was convicted in absentia for the murder of Ms Desire Mirembe Jemimah was arrested inside a Nairobi hotel as he preparing to jet out of the country.

On May 20, 2022, Justice Henry Kaweesa Isabirye, convicted the suspect saying that after studying all the evidence issued in relation to the death he had concluded that it was a matter of love going sour that led to the death of Ms Jemimah.

Ms Jemimah was murdered by the suspect in Lugazi in Uganda and her body was dumped in a sugarcane plantation. At the time of her death, the deceased was a medical student at Makerere University.

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For the last 15 months, Ugandan police officers have been pursuing the suspect until he was arrested on the night of Tuesday, September 12, 2023.

He told the police that he was planning to leave Kenya but the plans were thwarted which made him check into the hotel.

“He had taken several measures to change his identity including change of name in an attempt to evade law enforcement,” the media in Uganda reported.

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It has also emerged that CCTV footage from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) made it easy to identify the suspect as a wanted man and whose records had been filed by the Interpol database.

Mr Kireba had in November 2021, been denied bail by a Kampala Court and that is how he disappeared from police radar.

Ugandan police service enlisted the help of other international security agencies, including the FBI, to track down Mr Kireba.

“Arrangements are in place to hand him over to Interpol Uganda who will thereafter hand him to the Mukono High Court in liaison with the office of the DPP, CID, and Kampala Metropolitan police,” Ugandan police spokesperson Fred Enanga told the press on Wednesday, September 13, 2023.

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