- The children aged between two years and 16 included six girls.
- Police said they arrested a Kenyan and Tanzanian national who were hosting the children in the Sunday, February 18 night operation.
Image: The Star
Police raided a house in Kayole, Nairobi and rescued 16 children who they suspected were supposed to be smuggled.
The children aged between two years and 16 included six girls.
Police said they arrested a Kenyan and Tanzanian national who were hosting the children in the Sunday, February 18 night operation.
It is believed the children had arrived from different parts of the country and Tanzania and were headed to an unknown destination, police said.
Police said they are yet to know where the children were headed and the mission.
They were being held in a two-roomed house for the past weeks when police were alerted.
Nairobi police boss Adamson Bungei said they are interrogating the two suspects to know the mission of the children in the house.
“Some of the children are as young as two years. It is a hard task to even take care of such young ones,” he said.
He asked for public help to contain the crime.
The children were later taken to a private children’s home in the area for care ahead of investigations.
Child smuggling and trafficking are rampant in the region. Some of the children are stolen and sold locally or out of the country.
The smugglers are powerful and moneyed hence the trend despite operations.
The trend is at times practised in hospitals where children go missing at birth.
Last year in 2023, a Nairobi court found two social workers at the Mama Lucy hospital guilty of child trafficking and neglect of duty.
Fred Leparan, a social worker, was caught in a well-planned plot to sell a child abandoned at Mama Lucy Hospital while negotiating with an undercover journalist.
Leparan was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday, but he will only serve 25 years in prison and 10 years on probation.
Selina Adundo, his accomplice, received a two-year non-custodial sentence or a fine of Sh100,000.
The prosecution told the court that between March 1, 2020, and November 16, 2020, at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital in Embakasi Central within Nairobi, jointly with others not before the court they conspired to commit a felony of trafficking.
Police say they have a children’s desk to address the menace in various parts of the country.
Despite the heavy fines and harsh punishment on the crime, the traffickers still thrive in the region.