The manner of the lawyer’s gruesome death has a strong resemblance to how the life of another prominent personality, politician and lawmaker, Charles Were, was snuffed out on the early evening of Wednesday, April 30.
The circumstances leading to the death of this high-profile lawyer, as released by police, indicate that the lawyer's self-driven vehicle had slowed down in a traffic jam before a hooded pillion passenger toting a pistol walked to his car window.
He shot him dead before confidently jumping back on the waiting motorbike, which weaved its way through the crawling traffic and zoomed off.
Death is suspected to have been instantaneous, with nothing taken from the dead man.
As expected, the social media in the country has been loud, dubbing the murder an assassination. This could be a misnomer; the country probably lacks the sophistication and career appeal of the natural assassin.
So, who killed Kyalo Ngubo? Was it an assassin or a hitman?
SETTING RECORD STRAIGHT
Historically, the original assassins were offshoots of militant Shia Muslims tasked specifically for murder missions. Conventional wisdom states that they ritually smoked hashish before being dispatched to their deadly missions, and the Arabic word "hashishin" (hash-smoker) was corrupted into "assassin" among the early Europeans.
In modern times, an assassination is a planned extermination where there is no other motive apart from killing a specific person. The elimination is mainly tied to political, ideological or symbolic motives.
The planned extermination of this high-profile lawyer is not expected to cause any political repercussions. Modern assassins are professional freelancers and are highly skilled and more diverse in their killing methods than hitmen.
In the underworld, they are never labelled as assassins but use euphemistic terms, such as ‘death consultant’ or ‘wet work specialist’.
Hitmen, on the other hand, are a subclass of the assassin and are typically contracted for a ‘job’ through criminal connections and crime gangs.
The term ‘hitman’ was originally mafia slang but is now used more loosely for hired hands in contract killings.
Most hitmen are normally young members of a criminal organisation and rarely operate outside the criminal circles in a known geographical terrain.
Traditionally, assassins and hitmen are sourced by word of mouth through a series of ‘cutouts’.
Cutouts ensure that confidentiality is maintained. In this age of the internet, the dark net or the deep web — the hidden part of the internet web — is the first port of call for any serious person keen to hire an assassin.
Payment is also done anonymously, not via credit card or cash, and of course never by M-Pesa. Lately, with the advanced financial technology, payments are done through escrow accounts or by Bitcoin.
The payment varies according to the perceived importance of the target and the potential consequences of the action. It also depends on the professionalism of the assassin.
Several years back, a local daily opined that hiring a hitman in Nairobi would set you back between Sh300,000 and Sh1 million. And that is payment for one “hit”.
CONCLUSION
So, was the killing of this lawyer done by a hitman or an assassin? Every analysis points to the fact that this was not a very professional job.
One, as per the reports garnered so far, several random shots were fired, with the belief that one of the shots was likely to be fatal. A professional assassin would go for a single clean, deadly shot, preferably on the head or the heart. A shot that even if the target is on the operating table with the doctors scrubbed for the operation, the shot person would still not survive.
Secondly, a professional assassin is a loner, which ensures that the focus is maintained and that the possibility of apprehension is reduced to a minimum. Involving accomplices inevitably leads to some compromising and reduces the chances of a clean escape.
Third, not to belittle the achievements and standing of that honourable departed gentleman, but the truth of the fact is that apart from close insiders and the legal fraternity, the departed lawyer was not known nationally, and his demise is bound to register abysmally low on the political landscape.
Lastly, modern security measures are also well advanced, especially in the urban settings. Everyone and everything coming into or out of a controlled area is electronically profiled.
So, the tailing of the lawyer’s car in the age of so many CCTVs and the hit at a traffic stop on a weekday in the age of ubiquitous mobile phones, citizen journalism and in the early evening only belongs to the stupidity of amateurs.
This was a job by a hitman through and through.
Col (Rtd) J M Owuoth is a retired military officer
