NAIROBI, Kenya- A digital forensics expert has told the High Court that CCTV footage from Nairobi’s Central Police Station, where teacher and blogger Albert Ojwang was held before his death, was deliberately and manually erased.
Testifying in the ongoing murder trial, forensic video analyst Aloni Okwako told the court that an examination of the station’s Digital Video Recorder (DVR) established that the surveillance footage had not been lost through a system malfunction but had been intentionally deleted through human intervention.
Okwako’s testimony adds to earlier evidence presented by investigators that the CCTV system at the station was tampered with shortly after Ojwang died in police custody.
The court heard that forensic analysis showed the DVR had been manually accessed, with footage erased in a manner inconsistent with normal system operation.
According to the expert, the deletion required deliberate human action.
The CCTV footage is considered a critical piece of evidence because it could have captured Ojwang’s final moments inside Central Police Station before he was rushed to Mbagathi Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The High Court had earlier halted the trial pending the production and analysis of the CCTV evidence, ruling that the footage was essential for both the prosecution and defence.
The testimony corroborates earlier findings by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), which informed Parliament that the station’s surveillance system had been interfered with after Ojwang’s death.
IPOA Chairperson Issack Hassan previously disclosed that DVR logs showed the system’s storage drives were replaced and formatted on the morning of June 8, 2025.
Investigators said a technician had initially been called to delete only specific footage but explained that partial deletion was impossible, meaning the entire recording had to be formatted and erased.
A CCTV technician was subsequently arrested after investigators alleged he had been approached by police officers to interfere with the surveillance system.
The technician has maintained that he informed the officers selective deletion was impossible and that formatting the DVR would erase all recordings.
Ojwang died while in police custody after being arrested over a social media post.
An autopsy later concluded that he died from blunt force trauma, neck compression and multiple soft tissue injuries, contradicting initial police claims that he had fatally injured himself inside the cell.
Several police officers have since been charged with murder, while the prosecution continues to build its case around forensic evidence, witness testimony and the alleged destruction of CCTV evidence.
The trial continues.