Three found guilty of attacking Kenyan writer

NAIROBI, Dec 14 (Reuters) A Kenyan court has found three security guards guilty of attacking and robbing Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiongo two years ago.

A fourth suspect, the writer's nephew, was set free for lack of evidence.

During a homecoming after a 22-year self-imposed exile, Thiongo was brutally attacked by four men in his apartment in Nairobi. His wife Njeeri was raped and burnt with cigarettes the night of the attack in August 2004.

''I found the prosecution has proved its case against Richard Kayago Maeta, Elias Sikuku Wanjala and Peter Mulati Wafula to sustain a conviction,'' trial magistrate Julie Oseko said during an eight-hour long judgement delivered yesterday.

She acquitted Ngugi's nephew, John Kiragu Chege, of the same charges and is scheduled to sentence the three tomorrow.

The magistrate said it was a normal case of robbery with violence and had nothing to do with political intimidation.

Ngugi, a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California Irvine, was detained without charge in 1977 and fled Kenya in 1982 when a theatre where one of his plays was being performed was burnt down.

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