GANG TARGETED KARANGA PRISON

APART from raiding the Exim bank here, the gunned down alleged Kenyan gangsters had also reportedly planned to storm the Karanga Remand Prison to rescue fellow Kenyans locked up there for an number of robbery charges and murder.

Regional Police Commander Lucas Ng’hoboko told the 'Daily News on Saturday' yesterday that he could neither confirm nor refute the rumours but neither could he also disregard any piece of intelligence in the war against crime.

“The sure information we had is that the men planned to raid Exim Bank but I cannot also rule out what you are telling me. It is quite possible that the raid on Exim Bank was a diversionary tactic. But thanks a lot. We will make sure they don’t escape,” the RPC said.

Moshi town is awash with tales that the gunned gangsters, ten men and one woman, actually planned to raid Karanga Remand Prison where about ten other Kenyans are locked up for a series of alleged robberies and murder spanning a three-year period.

The tales were calcified by the large number of alleged Kenyan criminals who crossed into Tanzania and the heavy weapons and armour they carried. Altogether, close to 20 men crossed the border in what one military analyst equated to deploying an assault platoon.

Residents also recalled bragging by one Saitoti, a Kenyan suspected gunman held at Karanga in connection with the National Microfinance Bank (NMB), Mwanga Branch robbery last month that it was useless keeping them behind bars as they would soon get out.

Meanwhile, a group of Kenyan doctors arrived here yesterday to conduct post-mortem on the bodies of 14 suspected gangsters police shot to death last Thursday in a preemptive strike against a bank raid.

A cross-section of residents here have praised the police action in a region that has witnessed four frustrating robberies targeting banks and money shops in about three years, nearly all allegedly carried out by criminals from across the border.

The residents advised police and immigration officers to carefully track foreigners entering our country to cage criminals before they wreaked any havoc.

One business executive advised that the surveillance should not spare even religious preachers as some were nothing but criminals. He cited the NBC Moshi Branch robbery in 2004 in which one of the prime suspects was a preacher.

SOURCE: DAILY NEWS