How heroic trio of fighter pilots scuttled mission to bomb State House and GSU

•As the three top notch pilots relaxed at home with their families, rebel servicemen at KAF Nanyuki Station serviced and armed three jet fighters, rounded them up at gunpoint and ordered them to bomb two city targets. However, the three knew one thing - they were abductees on the ground but in charge in the air

On November 24, 1982, Corporal Bramwel Injeni Njereman, an armaments technician with the Kenya Air Force, became the first Kenyan to be convicted of treason for trying to overthrow the Government of Kenya.

According to judgement passed by a court martial sitting at the Kenya Army’s Langata Barracks, Njereman was found guilty of five overt acts during the attempted coup of August 1, 1982.

Among these acts was “forcing Major David Mutua to fly an F/5 aircraft on a bombing mission to Nairobi and accompanying him at gunpoint.” He was sentenced to death by hanging.

About a month later — on December 16, 1982 — Cpl Walter Odira Ojode became the second Kenyan to be found guilty of the same offence by the same court.

According to the presiding judge, he “locked up servicemen and officers and ordered Major David Mutua and Capt John Mugwanja to fly F/5 jets to bomb some targets in Nairobi.” He, too, earned the death penalty.

Both servicemen appealed and lost their cases. Along with coup leader Hezekiah Ochuka and principal conspirator Pancras Oteyo Okumu, they were executed on the night of July 10, 1985 at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

Career hangman

The executions were carried out by Michael Wanjuki Kirugumi, a career hangman with dozens of hangings to his name in the colonial-era facility.

To date, they remain the last people to be lawfully killed by the Government of Kenya.

Who was Major David Mutua? Who was Capt John Mugwanja? And who was Capt John Baraza, the third pilot not mentioned in the aforementioned judgements.

They were fighter pilots skilled in flying — in the case of Mutua and Mugwanja — the most potent warplane in the Kenya Air Force inventory, the F/5 Tiger.

On the bright Sunday morning of August 1, 1982, they flew a mission of hitherto scant detail to Nairobi that could have changed the course of Kenya’s history forever.

As the three pilots relaxed at home with their families, rebel servicemen at Laikipia Air Base, known then as KAF Nanyuki Station, serviced and armed three jet fighters. Mutua’s two-seat F/5F Tiger was loaded with 500lb bombs and Baraza’s Strikemaster with high explosive antitank rockets. Though not carrying bombs, the guns of Mugwanja’s single seat F/5E Tiger were loaded.

The pilots were rounded up from their residences and at gunpoint, Cpl Njereman ordered them to suit up and get into their cockpits. The mission — to bomb State House Nairobi and the General Service Unit headquarters, also in Nairobi. He took the back seat of Mutua’s plane to enforce the order.
This was to be the three pilots’ last mission and military and political scholars can argue indeterminably about what Kenya would have become had they done what their captors ordered them to do.

A former air force pilot familiar with the events of that day told Saturday Nation: “The pilots went through all the motions of obeying their captors’ instructions without any intention of carrying out the decisive order. They bid their time knowing a simple thing — they were abductees on the ground but in charge in the air. Njereman had never flown in a jet before, much less a high performance one like the F/5. Mutua decided to teach him a lesson.”