UK Court convicts Ugandan over wife’s murder

A British court has found a Ugandan man David Gikawa, 39, guilty of murdering his wife Linah Keza, 29. He now awaits sentencing on Friday. 

Keza a Rwandese national living in the UK was killed two days after she reported threats to her life by Gikawa who worked as a security guard.  The talented model and dancer had filled risk assessment forms detailing how her former estranged husband was armed with a sharpened kitchen blade and had boasted about killing any man she went out with.

Keza had also drafted an affidavit applying for a restraining order and tried to change her locks.

But in the early hours of 31 July last year Gikawa sneaked into her home and knifed her repeatedly in the chest.

Gikawa was convicted of murder after a two-week trial at the Old Bailey. The UK police handled a number of domestic abuse incidents in the two years before Keza was stabbed. It is also reported that he had threatened to kill her if he found her with any other man.

The abuse escalated with the worst incident of violence on 9 April 2012 when he attacked her with a knife.

A few days before she was killed Ms Keza changed the lock on her flat. Her brother Ivan Kigenza spoke to her for the last time at 10pm on 30 July last year but she did not mention Gikawa at all.

The next morning he got no answer on her phone and went round to her flat to find the police at the scene.
“I was told she was dead,” he said.

She had made a witness statement to police about Gikawa two days before her death.

At around 4.30am on July 31, 2013 he went to the flat and stabbed Ms Keza to death.

The killer said that his three sisters and two of his brothers were murdered in front of him in Rwanda during the genocide in the 1990s.

Gikawa denied the abuse had taken place and said he ‘never did anything’ to her.

He claimed Keza was depressed and had threatened to stab herself.

The killer said that his three sisters and two of his brothers were murdered in front of him in Rwanda during the genocide in the 1990s.

Judge Michael Topolski told Gikawa: “You have been convicted on the clearest evidence of the brutal murder of a wholly innocent woman. There is only but one sentence that I must pass upon you and that is life imprisonment. I also have to determine how many years you must serve before you can even be considered safe to be released into the community.”

The New Vision

UM– USEKE.RW