Kenya aristocrat jailed for 8 months over killing

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The heir to Kenya's most famous white settler family received eight months in jail Thursday for shooting a black poacher in a case that has highlighted land and race tensions in the east African country.

Tom Cholmondeley, grandson of Lord Delamere who came to Kenya from Britain a century ago, was found guilty of manslaughter last week for the 2006 shooting of Robert Njoya on the family's huge ranch.

At Kenya's High Court, Justice Muga Apondi said he was imposing a "light" eight-month sentence given that Cholmondeley had been imprisoned for three years already, and had tried to help Njoya with first aid and transport to hospital.

Under the Kenyan legal system, Cholmondeley, 40, will still serve the eight months in jail even though he has already been in a Nairobi prison since mid-2006.

The tall, besuited landowner stood impassively as the sentence was read to a courtroom packed with foreign journalists, and members of both his and his victim's family.

"The sentence is not commensurate with the seriousness of the offence ... eight months is far too lenient in the circumstances," Keriako Tobiko, Kenya's director of public prosecutions, said.

Cholmondeley's lawyer Fred Ojiambo termed the sentence "just." Njoya's wife refused to comment after the ruling.

"It is very important that the Njoya family are well looked after, the Delameres are not horrible people ... they will probably become very good friends, the Njoyas and the Delameres," said one of Cholmondeley's friends.

SECOND CASE

The trial was the second such case against the Eton-educated aristocrat, who was accused of killing a wildlife ranger, Samson Ole Sisina, in 2005.

That case was dropped for lack of evidence, triggering an outcry and suggestions from many Kenyans that their nation still had two sets of laws -- for rich and for poor.

Sisina's relatives, dressed in traditional ethnic Maasai garb, were in court with placards that read: "We want justice for Sisina," and "In 2005 Ole Sisina, 2006 Njoya, who is next?"

Lucy Sisina, the ranger's widow, wept as she accused the government of ignoring her husband's case.

The flamboyant lifestyle of the original Lord Delamere and other wealthy white settlers from central Kenya's "Happy Valley" inspired a book and the 1987 film "White Mischief."

Judge Apondi acknowledged tensions around the present case.

"This court understands the undercurrents, but I believe the executive is dealing with the issues of land and other inequalities," he said.

The trial has touched on deep sensibilities in Kenya where whites took large tracts of land during British rule until independence in 1963. Locals say influential Kenyans then did exactly the same.

Human rights activists and some members of communities near Cholmondeley's 55,000-acre Soysambu ranch near Lake Naivasha in Kenya's Great Rift Valley had presented the case as a battle "between the haves and have-nots."

"The sentence has clearly shown that the weak and the poor will never get justice, and they will continue to suffer at the hands of the rich," said Tutah Ochieng, an activist in Naivasha.

Armed with a gun, Cholmondeley had found Njoya pursuing wildlife on his land, as other poor Kenyans in the area often do, alleging they have no other way to eat.

He had meant to scare Njoya, but ended up fatally shooting him in the dusk confrontation, the court heard.

(Additional reporting by Anthony Gitonga in Naivasha)

(Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Wangui Kanina and Giles Elgood)