Sky News pulls down KQ stowaway article

Sky News has pulled down their investigative story that had identified the KQ stowaway as Paul Manyasi.

A spot check on the Sky News website on Thursday morning showed that the page no longer exists.

It had been titled ‘Plane stowaway: Who was Kenyan man who fell from the sky‘

A second story that captured the response of the Kenya Airports Authority has also been deleted.

Its headline was: ‘Stowaway: Kenya authorities dispute identity of man who fell from the plane’.

However, the author, John Sparks, still has the website link for the investigative piece on his Twitter page.

On Thursday, the Daily Nation published a damning exposé on its front page, contradicting the British newspaper’s claims that the man pictured was the unidentified stowaway.

The Kenyan newspaper tracked down the man in the photo, Isaac Shivonje, a remandee at the Kamiti Maximum Prison.

Their interview revealed that his father had lied to Sky News about his son’s whereabouts.

“I knew that my son was in remand but I could not reveal to them since I did not want the villagers to know that my son was in jail,” the Daily Nation quoted him.

The young Shivonje is said to be in remand having failed to pay Ksh. 200,000 after he was arrested for defilement charges.

He was an English and Science teacher at a private school in Kawangware.

Shivonje told the Daily Nation that a warden told him his pictures had been seen on TV.

“I saw my pictures on Citizen TV but the name was not mine. They said I was a cleaner at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport,” he said.

Citizen TV had reported the story after KAA rubbished the Sky News report saying no such man had ever worked there.

The British TV station had reported that the man in the picture was Paul Manyasi, an employee of Colnet, the cleaning company contracted by JKIA.

Reports indicate that MJM Law LLP,  a Nairobi law firm has threatened to sue Sky News accusing them of defaming their client.

They demanded a full retraction of the published article, an apology and written commitment not to publish more articles on Isaac Shivonje.