Dibs

On trial now are the four Nairobi thugs who attacked Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o in 2004 and raped his wife. Ngugi’s writings lambasting colonialism and Christianity and the Kenyan government got him jailed in 1977 — he wrote his book A Devil on the Cross on prison toilet paper. A Marxist who wrote Swahili and his native Gikuyu after denouncing the English language, in which he had written previously, the author of A Grain of Wheat; Detained; The Black Hermit; Decolonizing the Mind and other works became a professor at NYU after his release from prison. Later he began teaching at the University of California at Irvine. But he ended his self-imposed exile with a visit to Africa in 2004, which ended in disaster when four assailants beat him, robbed him, and brutally raped his wife. The assailants are now on trial and claiming police brutality and coercion, as reported by the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation: “The third suspect … told the court that he was tortured and lured with goodies to implicate principal suspect in the trial. Elias Sikuku Wanjala told trial magistrate Julie Oseko that he is not sure whether he can father a child as police damaged his private parts using pliers. Wanjala … said the police promised him a job and cash money to implicate engineer John Kiragu Chege, accused of engineering the attack on Ngugi and his wife Njeeri on the night of 1th and 12th of August 2004.” What kind of goodies?