An international religious cult suspected to be behind the vanishing of a Kenyan woman and her son is demanding the release of its local representative.
Mr Dave McKay, who says he is the leader and founder of Jesus Christians, sent an e-mail from Sydney, Australia, to protest at what he termed continued incarceration of Mr Ronald Gianstefani.
The representative is being held at Gigiri Police Station, Nairobi, by officers investigating the disappearance of the 27-year-old woman and the boy.
Mr McKay wondered why police were flouting the law barring them from detaining a suspect for more than 48 hours without a charge.
“It appears that powerful people in Kenya have taken offence at our presence, and have influenced police to take one of our leaders, Ronald Gianstefani, into custody,” he said.
He’s done nothing wrong
“It is our understanding that he has done nothing wrong, and the police know this.
Otherwise, they would have charged him.”
He defended his cult which he called “a deeply committed religious community who have been actively seeking to help the people of Kenya through various projects.”
He said: “Our Christian commitment has inspired a number of local people, who have expressed some support for what we do and teach.”
The head of the special crime-prevention police unit, Mr Nyaga Reche, had said he hoped to trace the woman and son through her Safaricom mobile phone, arguing that she had been in contact with her parents and police by it.
But he said the phone had suddenly gone silent.
“We can’t reach her on the cellphone number and suspect that she has discarded it to prevent police from catching up with her,” her mother said yesterday.
Police had also sought help from Safaricom personnel in the search.
The detectives are concentrating the hunt within a radius of 300 metres in the city’s South C residential area where they were directed by signals from Safaricom satellites.
The Nation learnt also that the woman was spotted at the Hurligham shopping centre on Wednesday last week.
A secluded cybercafe
With her son and a white couple, a police source said, they had spent the whole of the day at a secluded cybercafe and the boy was kept busy with computer games.
They left at different times for lunch.
The mother of the university graduate said she believed her daughter was drugged by her “captors”, adding, “She was very adamant and violent the last time we were together…”
[Note that Betty is described almost as an accomplice in her own "kidnapping", making it clear that it is BETTY that they were trying to grab, so that they could punish her for disobeying her father, and so that he could take Betty's son away from her. Accusing Roland and Susan of "kidnapping" was just part of the plot to REALLY kidnap Betty. Even Australian Embassy officials said that we did the right thing by not handing Betty over, as she may have been killed if we had. Such is the level of corruption in Kenya.]
