This archive report was first published on 21 November 2019.
On November 11, Sky News published an explosive article revealing the identity of a Kenyan stowaway who fell off a Kenya Airways plane in London. The article identified the stowaway as Paul Manyasi, a cleaner for Colnet, a company providing services to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
According to Sky News, the media house had reached out to several current and former Colnet staff, including a woman named Irene, who revealed that her colleague and lover went missing at the end of June.
However, the story took a dramatic turn when the father of Manyasi, Issac Beti, denied that his son was the stowaway. In an interview, Beti claimed that his son, Cedric Shivonje, was alive and in prison, accused of defilement and locked up at the Industrial Area Remand Prison in Nairobi.
Kenya Prisons Service spokesman Dixon Mwakazi confirmed that Shivonje was remanded at the Nairobi Medium Prison, Industrial Area. DCI detectives later visited the prison and recorded a statement from Shivonje, with DCI boss George Kinoti confirming the development.
Shivonje himself later spoke out, claiming that the pictures published in the Sky News report were ripped from his Facebook account.
