Death sentence for 'prison beauty queen'

A 24-year-old Kenyan woman has been sentenced to death by hanging for killing her boyfriend.

Ruth Kamande was 21 when she was charged with murder for stabbing her 24-year-old boyfriend Farid Mohammed to death. Since her arrest in 2015, she has been held in Lang'ata women's jail in Nairobi, where she won a prisoners' beauty pageant.

Kenyan media have focused on her looks through the trial, dubbing her the "prison beauty queen".

Rights group Amnesty International has called on Kenya's High Court to reverse its decision to sentence Kamande to death, calling the practice "cruel, inhumane and outdated".

Kenya has not enforced hanging as a capital punishment since 1987. Amnesty said this latest sentence, if enforced, would be "a blow to the country's "progressive record in commuting death sentences to terms of imprisonment".

Before sentencing, Kamande testified that her boyfriend threatened to kill her when she found out he was HIV-positive. She said she had acted in self-defence:

“Mohammed told me that he would rather kill me and himself than have his status exposed. l stabbed him severally using a kitchen knife, which fell on my chest from his hands after I overpowered him, after putting my two thumbs in his eyes to save my life."

But Jugde Jessie Lessit said Kamande showed no mercy, still shows no remorse and deserves nothing less than death.

"She stabbed again and again and took pleasure in it. It wasn't at a go, there were intervals," Judge Lessit said.