Kenya Judge Aquits 2 in Briton’s Death

NAIROBI, Kenya —  The judge in the trial of two Kenyans accused of murdering British tourist Julie Ward in 1988 said Monday he found them not guilty.

Judge Fidahussein Abdallah said he agreed completely with the decision of three court assessors last Monday that Jonah Tajeu Magiroi, 28, and Peter Metui Kipeen, 26, were innocent of Ward’s brutal murder in the Maasai Mara game reserve.

“All the assessors have expressed a unanimous opinion that the accused are innocent. . . . I entirely concur with (them) that the accused are not guilty and I acquit them,” the judge said at the end of the grueling four-month Nairobi High Court trial.

He added that circumstantial evidence linking the rangers to the murder of Ward, 28, was not strong enough and that three other Kenyans working in Maasai Mara at the time could know more about her death than they had told the court.

Janet Ward, the woman’s mother, said she was “disappointed and flattened. We still don’t know what the truth is.”

The victim’s father, John Ward, who has campaigned to track down his daughter’s killers, said he had expected the verdict since the assessors gave their opinion. Under Kenyan law there is no jury.

“On the evidence he heard, he came to the right decision. . . . But if you believe these two are not guilty, it means the guilty ones are still out there,” a pale Ward told reporters in the packed courtroom.