KENYA: POLICE STOP PROTESTS AGAINST RELEASE OF WHITE FARMER ACCUSED OF KILLING WILDLIFE RANGER

Record ID: 322918

  • Title: KENYA: POLICE STOP PROTESTS AGAINST RELEASE OF WHITE FARMER ACCUSED OF KILLING WILDLIFE RANGER
  • Date: 20th May 2005
  • Summary: (BN11) NAIROBI, KENYA (MAY 19, 2005) (REUTERS - QUALITY AS INCOMING) 1. SCU MAN HOLDING BANNER "JUSTICE FOR THE POOR" 0.04 2. (SOUNDBITE)(English) PROTESTER, WANGUI MAPAMBANO SAYING: "So we are just walking by to remind him that he is still a public servant - he is not a servant of the Great Britain - He is not even Lord Delamere's servant." 0.12
  • Embargoed: 4th June 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NAIROBI, KENYA
  • Country: Kenya
  • Reuters ID: LVA4A11LLK0B8HNML0YTQAH35PMG
  • Story Text: Kenya police stop protests against release of white
    farmer accused of killing wildlife ranger
    Kenya's police on Thursday (May 19, 2005) fired teargas
    to disperse members of two human rights groups preparing to
    march to the attorney general's office to protest at the
    release of a white farmer charged with the murder of a game
    warden.

    Thomas Cholmondeley, son of one of Kenya's largest
    white landowners, the 5th Baron Delamere, was freed from a
    maximum security prison after a court dropped the case
    against him on orders from the attorney general, bringing
    into question the fairness of Kenya's justice system.

    Members of human rights watchdog Kenya Human Rights
    Commission and another group, the People's Parliament,
    gathered at a bus stage in the city centre to prepare for a
    march that would have taken them past the country's
    parliament before going to Attorney General Amos Wako's
    office.

    "So we are just walking by to remind him that he is
    still a public servant, he is not a servant of the Great
    Britain, He is not even Lord Delamere's servant." said
    Wangui Mapambano, a member of a human rights group called
    People's Parliament.

    "The meeting is illegal, So you are going to move from
    here." said Julius Ndegwah, the head of police in Nairobi.

    Ndegwah could not immediately confirm if any members of
    the human rights groups or the public were arrested when
    the police scattered the crowd.

    In less than a minute of the riot police arriving at
    the scene where a crowd of about 200 people had gathered to
    listen to members of the rights groups had gathered, the
    crowd dispersed as police fired teargas into the crowd.

    At the end of the stampede, the shed that the human
    rights groups had been using to hand out pamphlets and
    banners to marchers was flattened, and the police finished
    off by gathering all the material into the back of their
    lorry.

    Cholmondeley, a 37-year-old Kenyan citizen, denies
    killing Samson Ole Sisina, a ranger with Kenya Wildlife
    Services, at his farm near the town of Naivasha.

    His release outraged many Kenyans, with Kenya Human
    Rights Commission calling for the government to apply the
    law equally.

    The judge at the High Court in Nakuru, Northwest of
    Nairobi said on Wednesday (May 18) that the attorney
    general had decided it would be in the public interest to
    terminate the case.


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