Mambosasa: No proof police officers shot Akwilina dead

Dar es Salaam. The person who shot a live bullet that killed a National Institute of Transport (NIT) student Akwiline Akwilini, will now never be known.

The 22-year old Akwiline died on February 16, 2018 after she was hit by a stray bullet as police were breaking up a rally by opposition Chadema.

President John Magufuli immediately ordered security organs to investigate and take action against the killers.

The Dar es Salaam Special Police Zone Commander, Mr Lazaro Mambosasa, said on February 19 that the police force was holding six policemen in connection with the death of Akwiline and that they were investigating 40 other police officers over the shooting incident.

However, in an interesting turn of events, Mr Mambosasa said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that all the arrested police officers had been set free.

He said the police force was unable to get evidence that would hold their arrested colleagues responsible for the killing.

“It should be remembered that the circumstances of the incident were clearly elaborated on how the death occurred and it was found out that the officers were not responsible for the death,” he said.

He said what led to the death of the NIT student was the ‘illegal’ demonstration by Chadema and not by the detectives who were called over to stop the demos.

Chadema members were walking to the office of Kinondoni district executive director to pressurize the director to issue the party’s election agents with affidavits in the run up to the February 17 parliamentary by-election in Kinondoni. A case is now ongoing at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court involving Chadema’s top brass as they are accused of staging unlawful demonstrations. When told that the ongoing case implicating the Chadema’s top officials has nothing to do with owning and using unauthorised weapons and that it was probably the officers with guns who fired the shot, Mr Mambosasa dismissed the argument calling it a “mere assumption.”

“I can assure you that we have authorised gun ownership to many people and all [top leaders] who were present there [at the demonstration] own guns, but it’s not yet proven whose gun was used and for that reason we can cannot arrest anyone with a gun for being responsible for the incident.”

At the same time, Mr Mambosasa said they were holding two people accused of sabotaging the Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) by hacking into the company’s data from public institutions using the telco’s service.

Kelvin Siame, 25, and Lilian Hosea, 36, a custom service officer and an accountant respectively, are accused of causing a loss of Sh46 million by secretly stealing data used by the University of Dar es Salaam, the National Social Security Fund, Tasaf, NHC and TRA and selling them to individual persons.