KENYA: Doors opened to secret torture chambers by Kenyan government, now keen to reveal how previous governments silenced their opponents

Record ID: 362713

  • Title: KENYA: Doors opened to secret torture chambers by Kenyan government, now keen to reveal how previous governments silenced their opponents
  • Date: 11th February 2003
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (FEBRUARY 11, 2003)(REUTERS) VARIOUS OF JUSTICE MINISTER KIRAITU MURUNGI TOURING CHAMBER HOLE IN WALL NAIROBI, KENYA (FEBRUARY 12, 2003)(REUTERS) SET-UP OF JUSTICE MINISTER, KIRAITU MURUNGI AT PRESS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE)(English) KIRAITU MURUNGI, JUSTICE MINISTER SAYING: "We have agreed we are going to convert the Nyayo torture chambers into a national
  • Embargoed: 26th February 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NAIROBI KENYA
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAEQJTTOGHHS0V778X04F6RA30O
  • Story Text: Kenya says it wants the world to know how previous governments silenced their opponents and opened the doors to secret torture chambers which human rights groups say previous leaders used right up until the middle of the 1990s.
    Former victims were able to revisit the chambers in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and recounted chilling tales of being confined to tiny dark cells, beaten with wooden sticks, submerged in water, and forced to drink their own urine because of lack of food.
    The 24-floor Nyayo House in bustling downtown Nairobi, towers high above many of the city's buildings. Serving as a provincial headquarters, most visitors today come to process identification cards or passports.
    But from around 1983 to 1996, below street level, rights groups say more than 100 people were interrogated, tortured and beaten by Kenyan security forces. Some people died, though no one knows how many.
    Behind a now-demolished wall in the basement car park, a dark corridor leads to 14 cells about 2x2 metres (yards) square. Water pipes, hoses and pieces of broken chairs remind the survivors of what they once endured.
    Joe Njoroge, now 35, said he spent five weeks at Nyayo House in 1990, accused of belonging to an underground movement called Mwakenya that was said to be against the government of then President Daniel arap Moi.
    "I would be beaten when I was stark naked I would be electrocuted at times and it was just horrible even to remember that time," he said, squatting in the corner of cell number two, all painted in red.
    He narrates that while he was there, guards would every morning bring a hose and blast highly pressurised water at him.
    "It was just very very sad one thing that I has surprised me and a question that is lingering in me is that I have come to discover that these were not makeshift cells it was actually an architectural drawing, showing that the building was actually drawn that way by the actual original architect.
    I fail to understand what briefs was given by the client, which is the government that you build a house with this kind of cells, where a human being is not actually supposed to be it is not fit for human habitation," said Njoroge.
    Another victim of torture Ogolla - wept as he remembered how he and his friend feared they would die from the torture they receieved.: "When he took porridge, he would urinate it straight so he told me Ogolla, me I'll die so I told him, Karanja even me I will die here so he left me here was taken to Shimolatewa prison, and he died," said Ogolla between sobs.
    Speaking to journalists after the tour of the chambers, Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi said the new NARC (National Rainbow Coalition) government, which won a landslide in December elections after 24 years of Moi rule, wanted to ensure that what happened in Nyayo would never happen again.
    "We have agreed we are going to convert the Nyayo torture chambers into a national monument of shame. We think our artists will participate so that we create a monument, which our children will be seeing when we are in town to see where we have come from and where we do not want to go back to," he told reporters and human rights activists.
    Victims described how they were taken from the underground cells to the 24th floor, where they were beaten with broken chairs.
    Kenyan rights group People Against Torture (PAT) who were at the chambers singing freedom and liberation songs, said the opening of Nyayo House was a historic moment for human rights in Kenya, but added that more needed to be done. They said they wanted an independent and thorough investigation into the incidents of torture by the previous government, and also called for the prosecution of all those who were responsible.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register