This archive report was first published on 21 November 2019.
On June 30th, a stowaway was found on a Kenya Airways flight to London, sparking a media frenzy. However, the story took a dramatic turn when Isaac Betti, the man named in a Sky News report published on November 11th, revealed that he had been bribed by a Sky News reporter with Ksh20,000 to lie about his son being the stowaway.
According to Betti, his son, Cedric Isaac Shivonje, is actually alive and in a Kenyan prison, where he has been since failing to raise a Ksh200,000 bail for an unrelated crime. Betti had initially denied his son's involvement in the stowaway incident, but later admitted to lying to protect his son.
Shivonje, who used to work as a teacher of English and science at a private school in Kawangware, has been speaking to journalists from behind bars. He claims that pictures used in the Sky News report were taken from his Facebook page.
Isaac Betti has since refuted the name 'Paul Manyasi' and revealed that his son's name is actually Cedric Isaac Shivonje. He also admitted to lying to Sky News, saying, 'I could not tell them that my son was in jail.' He further explained that he wanted to protect his son and did not want his neighbors to know about his son's imprisonment.
