The 1982 Kenyan coup d'état attempt was a failed attempt to overthrow President Daniel arap Moi's government. At midnight on Sunday, August 1, 1982, a group of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force took over the radio station Voice of Kenya and announced that they had overthrown the government. The group tried to force a group of Air Force fighter pilots to bomb the State House at gunpoint. The pilots pretended to follow the orders on the ground but once airborne they ignored them and instead dropped the bombs to Mount Kenya forests. unarmed[1].
Hezekiah Ochuka, a Senior Private Grade-I (the second lowest rank in Kenya’s military) ruled Kenya for about six hours before escaping to Tanzania. After being extradited back to Kenya, he was tried and found guilty of leading the coup attempt and hanged in 1987. Also implicated in the coup attempt was Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former Vice President to Jomo Kenyatta, and his son Raila Amolo Odinga.
The attempt was quickly suppressed by loyalist forces led by the Army, the General Service Unit (GSU) — paramilitary wing of the police — and later the regular police, but not without civilian casualties.
After the coup attempt, the entire Kenya Air Force was disbanded. Twelve people, including Ochuka, were sentenced to death, and over 900 were jailed. As of December 2009, this was the last time the death penalty was used in Kenya.
The coup attempt is also a direct cause for the snap elections in 1983.
In response to alleged campus involvement in the failed coup, the Kenyan government accused external communist sources of secretly funding the attempt.[2]
Audio of contemporary rebel broadcast on VOK during coup d'etat, 1982.
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