Ali Babitu Kololo is led to court, where he denied charges of kidnapping and robbery. Photograph: Miller & Maclean for the Guardian
A Kenyan man has been charged in connection with the attack in which a British tourist was shot dead and his wife kidnapped.
David Tebbutt, 58, and his 56-year-old wife, Judith, were staying at the remote Kiwayu Safari Village resort on the Kenyan coast near the border with Somalia when their beach hut was stormed by gunmen early on 11 September.
Tebbutt, finance director at the publisher Faber & Faber, was shot and his wife was bundled into a waiting speedboat.
She has not been seen or heard from since.
On Monday a former employee of the Kiwayu resort appeared in court on the nearby island of Lamu to plead not guilty to charges of kidnapping and robbery.
Ali Babitu Kololo, 25, told the packed courtroom that he had been forced to co-operate with the gang at gunpoint, adding that he had voluntarily gone to police the next day to report the crime.
A second man, Issa Sheck Saadi, is expected to appear in court later.
The Tebbutts, from Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, had arrived at the Kiwayu after visiting the Masai Mara game reserve and were the resort’s only guests.
A team of Metropolitan police officers has travelled to Kenya to help local authorities with their investigations, while the Foreign Office has deployed a team to the area from the high commission in Nairobi.
David Cameron said last week that the government was doing everything possible to resolve the kidnapping.
The Foreign Office, which has asked the media not to speculate on Judith Tebbutt’s whereabouts or the identity of her captors for fear of endangering her, is continuing to call for her release.
Source: THE GUARDIAN
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