Ex UK Soldier Charged of Murdering Kenyan Female Appears in Courtroom

An individual has shown up before a judge as extradition hearings started in the legal matter of Agnes Wanjiru, a female from Kenya who was killed near a UK military installation in the year 2012.

Robert Purkiss, thirty-eight, who is originally from Greater Manchester, was presented at the Westminster court on the last Friday, and told the court he intended to contest the extradition. It is understood that he was arrested on Thursday evening.

An arrest warrant for the defendant was authorized by a court in Nairobi in September. Legal prosecutors informed the Kenyan judiciary that the individual had been charged with a sole charge, of murder, and that the government of Kenya would seek his extradition to answer to accusations.

Purkiss was once employed as a army medic with the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, the military regiment for the English northwest, including on missions to Afghanistan.

Wanjiru, 21, a beautician who had a infant daughter, went missing after a evening out, and her corpse was located after two months in the premises of the lodging where she had most recently observed.

Nobody had before been taken into custody or accused in association with her passing. The arrest of Purkiss was the result of a new police inquiry, which followed a exposé in 2021 by a weekly publication, in which the publication reached out to several current and former soldiers in the military group.

The investigation has been led by detectives in Kenya, which, under a bilateral security treaty, maintains prosecutorial power in the matter.