Ex UK Serviceman Charged of Murdering Kenyan Female Appears in Court

An individual has appeared in court as extradition hearings commenced in the legal matter of Agnes Wanjiru, a Kenyan national, a Kenyan woman who was murdered near a British army base in 2012.

Robert Purkiss, thirty-eight, who is originally from Greater Manchester region, appeared before Westminster magistrates court on the last Friday, and informed the court he planned to fight the deportation. Reports indicate that he was arrested on Thursday night.

An arrest warrant for the defendant was authorized by a Kenyan court in Nairobi in September. Legal prosecutors informed the Kenyan judiciary that Purkiss had been charged with a one count, of killing, and that the Kenyan government would request his deportation to face charges.

He served formerly as a medic with the Lancaster Regiment, the army unit for the English northwest, including on deployments in Afghanistan.

The victim, twenty-one, a hairdresser who had a infant daughter, vanished after a night out, and her corpse was discovered two months later in the grounds of the accommodation where she had previously spotted.

No one had before been arrested or indicted in connection to her demise. Purkiss’s arrest was the result of a recent detective probe, which was initiated after a article in the year 2021 by a weekly publication, in which the publication contacted several serving and ex-military personnel in the regiment.

The investigation has been led by detectives in Kenya, which, under a bilateral security treaty, holds legal authority in the legal case.