Former British Serviceman Charged of Killing Kenya Woman Appears in Courtroom

A man has shown up before a judge as extradition hearings began in the case of Agnes Wanjiru, a Kenyan national, a woman of Kenyan origin who was killed near a British army base in 2012.

Robert Purkiss, 38, who is a native of Greater Manchester region, appeared before the magistrates' court in Westminster on the last Friday, and told the court he would challenge the extradition request. Sources suggest that he was arrested on Thursday evening.

A warrant for arrest for the suspect was released by a court in Nairobi in September. Legal prosecutors told the Kenyan court that the individual had been accused of a one count, of murder, and that the Kenyan government would seek his extradition to answer to accusations.

He was once employed as a medical attendant with the regiment of the Duke of Lancaster, the military regiment for the northwestern England, including on deployments in Afghanistan.

Wanjiru, twenty-one, a beautician who had a baby daughter, vanished after a night on the town, and her corpse was located two months later in the area of the lodging where she had last been seen.

No one had before been detained or accused in relation to her passing. The arrest of Purkiss was the result of a new police inquiry, which came after a exposé in 2021 by a Sunday newspaper, in which the newspaper approached several current and former soldiers in the regiment.

This inquiry has been headed by detectives in Kenya, which, under a mutual defense pact, retains jurisdiction in the legal case.