KENYA: U.N. official calls on top Kenya law enforcement officials to resign over police killings

Record ID: 361178

  • Title: KENYA: U.N. official calls on top Kenya law enforcement officials to resign over police killings
  • Date: 23rd February 2009
  • Summary: PEOPLE WALKING ON STREET (SOUNDBITE) (Swahili) NAIROBI RESIDENT, SAMUEL MWANGI, SAYING: "Looking at what's happening, I would like to see these leaders resign because these things are happening and no one is telling us what is going on. Yet people are continuing to die and we don't want to see this continue."
  • Embargoed: 10th March 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA901VZESNQTGNAQG7APUBZHRBY
  • Story Text: The U.N. investigator into extrajudicial killings in Kenya calls for the dismissal of top law enforcement officials following cases of alleged abuse by security forces.
    The United Nations investigator into extra-judicial killings said on Wednesday (February 25) that Kenya's police chief and attorney-general should be fired because of hundreds of alleged murders by security forces.
    Speaking at the end of a 10-day visit to the East African nation, U.N.
    rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions Philip Alston, said that Kenyan police were a law unto themselves and they often killed with impunity.
    The Australian official backed accusations that security forces have killed 500 suspected members of the outlawed Mungiki crime gang, 400 political demonstrators during a post-election crisis last year, and 200 suspected rebels from the remote western region of Mount Elgon.
    "In fact I received overwhelming testimony that there exists in Kenya, a systematic, widespread and carefully planned strategy to execute individuals, carried out on a regular basis by the Kenya police," he said.
    The police and military deny all the allegations.
    Alston's report, laced with sarcastic references to the authorities' failure to respond properly to the accusations, was one of the strongest indictments of impunity in Kenya.
    He accused police commissioner Hussein Ali of stonewalling his inquiries, and was critical of Kenya's president Mwai Kibaki.
    "His silence to date on this issue, is both conspicuous and problematic. Any serious commitment to ending the impunity that currently reigns in relation to this issue by the police, should begin with the immediate dismissal of the police commissioner."
    Alston's report came amid a furore over a videotape and statements from a policeman that he witnessed a police death squad strangling, shooting and hacking to death 58 people in a crackdown on the Mungiki. The policeman was later murdered.
    The government-funded human rights body, which released video clips and statements by former police squad driver Bernard Kiriinya, also urged the police chief to step down.
    On the streets of Nairobi, at least one man agreed the leaders should resign.

    "Looking at what's happening, I would like to see these leaders resign because these things are happening and no one is telling us what is going on. Yet people are continuing to die and we don't want to see this continue," said Samuel Mwangi.
    Kenya's coalition government, set up last April, faces criticism from foreign donors and public alike for allowing and even fanning both corruption and rights abuses.
    Kiriinya -- whom the rights group says was gunned down in a Nairobi street just outside a safe house last year, several months after giving his testimony -- described in chilling detail what he says was the killing of Mungiki suspects.
    The group, known for its macabre tactics including beheading and skinning victims, runs extortion rackets in central Kenya and says its followers are the heirs of Mau Mau rebels who fought British colonial rulers before independence.
    In his testimony, Kiriinya described police spraying victims with bullets as they laid face down, strangling them with rope, and hacking them to death with machetes. Victims were often disfigured afterwards to prevent recognition, then dumped in remote bush or woodland, he said.
    The police squad sometimes received money, and even compliments from the top, for their work, Kiriinya added.
    Police spokesmen dismissed the accusations as false, and said Kiriinya had been a bitter and disaffected officer.
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