Comrades Dennis Baraza Wechuli, Julius Owino, and Obwonyo Wawire remain in jail.
The strike by warehouse workers enters its sixth day as the union leadership continues to be held in illegal detention.
The workers are recorded under OB No. 83/25/07/2025 at Central Police Station, facing false allegations of inciting violence. However, their lawyer, Zedekiah Adika, has confirmed that no formal charge sheet exists. The police are operating a kangaroo court, shielding the culprits behind fabricated claims instead of presenting the comrades before a competent judge.
We extend our gratitude to Defenders Coalition for consistently standing in solidarity with poor, illegally detained comrades.
Cargill, a U.S. multinational conglomerate, is working hand-in-glove with the Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to jail union leaders and crush workers’ organisation. Their goal is clear: to intimidate the workers into submission and sabotage the legal strike.
As of this morning, DCI Mombasa has failed to secure approval from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) to charge the three detained comrades. The DPP cited “gaps in the proposed charges.” Yet rather than releasing the comrades on personal police bond, as is their legal right, the police are now demanding KSh 20,000 cash bail—a demand they flatly refused since Friday’s illegal arrests.
Our comrades were tortured and held in isolation, forced to sleep in flea-infested, freezing cells the entire weekend, only for the DCI to return with defective charges. Their threat to arraign them on Thursday, pending DPP approval, is baseless and unsustainable.
Let it be stated clearly:
The comrades are workers. The strike is legal.
The warehouse owners refused to obey February court orders enforcing the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). And now, the very same capitalist criminals, led by the filthy hands of Cargill, want our comrades dragged before courts they themselves have refused to obey!
The refusal by the Coast Regional DCI to grant bail was not incompetence; it was a calculated act to enable torture and serve the interests of imperialist capital. Today’s last-minute cash bail proposal is nothing but an extortionist scheme; an attempt to bleed the movement financially, to bankrupt the Party and destroy its organs of struggle.
We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all three comrades. We expose and denounce the DCI for weaponising the criminal justice system to serve capital and collect bribes.
Let us remind the police: they have no role in implementing CBAs. If they wish to serve justice, let them struggle for their own police union; a platform to demand better wages, housing, and dignity. Instead, under Ruto’s criminal regime, they are turned into tools of oppression and kill squads.
Let the police reflect:
Their wages are meagre.
Their housing is inhumane—or non-existent.
Their insurance schemes were scrapped by Ruto.
Their suicide rates are rising.
Junior officers are murdering senior officers.
Is this not a crisis? These are the issues the police should confront—not targeting unionists, activists, and revolutionaries!
The money the state spends on surveilling innocent Kenyans—physically and digitally—while criminals walk free, is a grotesque misuse of public funds. It is an insult to justice. It is state terrorism.
We say: Enough!
Free Baraza! Free Owino! Free Obwonyo!
Long live the workers’ strike! Long live internationalist solidarity!
Booker N. Omole
General Secretary, Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK)