Kenya’s leading blogger Bogonko Bosire will be among the continuing mysteries of the Uhuru regime. At the time of his disappearance, he had been part of a powerful social media team of propagandists who bogged down a youthful population into voting Uhuru and Ruto.
Last year, most people believed that Bogonko may have been on the ICC radar after his blog revealed the identity of a protected ICC witness at a time the country was being treated to ‘witnesses withdrawing’ from the ICC case against Uhuru. Many people thought the regime was ‘hiding’ him in some foreign embassy as a low key staff.
However, since Uhuru case has ended, Bogonko has remained missing with his former friends – like Dennis Itumbi – now comfortably perched at statehouse as Director, saying very little about him. In fact, they appear to have forgotten the man, and with all their government machinery they control, Bosire is still AWOL.
He disappeared in the first months of Uhuru presidency.
Bogonko, whose often scurrilous Jackal News website  reported on scandals, corruption and poked fun at celebrities and powerful politicians, had been threatened several times and his website hacked. He disappeared on September 18, 2013, and his brother, after searching for a year,  said the family had given up hope of finding him alive.
“The police would often call me to go check in the morgues every time they had a corpse that they thought would be him, but it always turned out to be a mistaken identity,†Elkanah Bosire told AFP.
“It was an awful experience, going to the mortuaries and seeing all those dead bodies. I decided to stop and we have given up hope of finding him.â€
Bogonko was a pioneer blogger, who, as a journalist, had worked for AFP. It is said his last assignment with AFP was to cover war torn South Sudan, before he left his employ and started freelance blogging, often taking on powerful politicians, media magnets, journalists and, lately, opposition politicians.
In the 2013 general elections, Bogonko, alongside Itumbi, Ng’eno and others formed what they referred to as Jubilee ”dark arts” outfit which has now morphed up into the PSCU – a body filled with pro-regime propaganda and propagandists.
“Bogonko Bosire was an intelligent, talented — if not sometimes controversial journalist. His disappearance is a tragic loss to the media fraternity here in Kenya,†said Tom Rhodes, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
“CPJ attempted to follow several leads to his case but unfortunately was unable to uncover what could have actually happened.â€
Last year, Reporters Without Borders said they were also “concerned about the disappearanceâ€.
President Uhuru yet to make any comment about his disappearance.