Kenya Extrajudicial Killings Report
“Killings by the police in Kenya are systematic, widespread and carefully planned. They are committed at will and with utter impunity,”
Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings offered a stinging indictment of Kenya’s police force in a written statement at the end of a 10-day trip to the country.
A day earlier, the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, with which Alston has been working on his visit, released filmed testimony of a former policeman, who has since been killed. He described over 50 executions by police officers. Alston said he found evidence that the police had set up death squads to target the gang.
The police force has denied involvement in extrajudicial killings. spokesman dismissed the allegations of the human rights commission, suggesting the organization was being investigated for receiving money from the Mungiki gang. The commission, in turn, dismissed those charges, accusing the police of a tendency to attack the character and credibility of its critics, rather than engaging with their charges.
Alston said he heard “overwhelming” testimony of the killings, which he said occurred regularly. The police commissioner and other senior Kenyan police officials denied the accusations, he said.
The police may kill for personal reasons, for extortion or for ransom, Alston said. He added, “Often they kill in the name of crime control, but in circumstances where they could readily make an arrest.
He cited as an example James Ng’ang’a Kariuki Muiruri, 29, whom he said police shot and killed last month in the capital, Nairobi.
“After a disagreement at a hotel, a police officer stopped the car James and his brother were in, and ordered James to handcuff himself. When he asked why he was being arrested, James was shot three times,” Alson said in the news release.
“The only exceptional things about the case were that James was the son of a former Member of Parliament, and the incident had been witnessed,” he said.
Alston said there was no accountability for the alleged police killings; there is no independent police internal affairs unit.
He called for Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki to fire the police commissioner. “Any serious commitment to ending the impunity that currently reigns in relation to the widespread and systematic killings by the police should begin with the immediate dismissal of the police commissioner. In the absence of such a step it will be impossible to conclude that there is a strong commitment at the very top to deal with this problem.”
As for Attorney General Amos Wako, Alston’s comments were severe, and he called for his resignation. “Mr. Wako is the embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of impunity.”
Alston also accused government security forces of torturing and killing hundreds of men in a March 2008 crackdown on a militia in the Mt. Elgon district, in western Kenya. And he said there was compelling evidence that what he called police death squads were operating in Nairobi and Central Province with a mandate to “exterminate” suspected Mungiki gang members. “These are not ‘rogue’ squads, but police who are acting on the explicit orders of their superiors,” he said.