Four Kenyan police officers have been charged with the triple murder of a human rights lawyer, his client and their driver, which sparked protests against extrajudicial killings in Kenya.
Willie Kimani, who worked as a lawyer for the International Justice Mission (IJM), a global, Christian NGO focused on human rights and law enforcement, was representing Josephat Mwenda who was shot and injured by police in April last year, during a routine traffic stop.
Mwenda filed a complaint over the shooting with Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) a civilian police accountability institution. Subsequently, police filed an avalanche of charges against Mwenda. His lawyer, Kimani, believed those charges were an effort to silence justice efforts.
The two men went missing, along with their driver Joseph Muiruri, after a court hearing on 23 June in Machakos County, an area to the east of Nairobi.
Witnesses said they saw the lawyer and his client in a basement cell at a police station shortly after the hearing.
The decomposing bodies of the three men were found in a river on the outskirts of Nairobi eight days later.
Post mortem reports suggest the men had been tortured before they were killed.
Three police officers were arrested on suspicion of murdering the men shortly after the bodies were found.
Although, historically, many murders have been blamed on the Kenyan police, the recent triple killing sparked outrage.
The hashtag #StopExtrajudicialKillings gained popularity on social media, and protests broke out across the country.
Court cases were suspended following a call by the Law Society of Kenya for all lawers to boycott the courts in the week following the discovery of the bodies.
A joint statement by 34 Kenyan and international human rights organisations condemned the killings.
"These extrajudicial killings are a chilling reminder that the hard-won right to seek justice for human rights violations is under renewed attack," said Muthoni Wanyeki from Amnesty International.
The IJM launched a global petition demanding an end to the police abuse of power and calling on President Uhuru Kenyatta to prosecute the perpetrators and remove the head of the Administration Police Service from his role.
Government spokesman Eric Kiraithe told the BBC World Service Newsday program that there were no "death squads" within the police force and that allegations of officers committing crimes would be fully investigated.
The murders were carried out by “rogue officers” acting on their own initiative, a senior interior ministry official, Amos Gatheca, said on 4 July.
Kenyan security forces carried out 25 extrajudicial killing between 2013 and 2015, said the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights.
However, non-governmental watchdog Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) says the police killed 97 people in 2015 alone. Haki-Africa, a campaign group in Mombasa, said it had documented more than 70 abductions by police locally over the last two years.
Loading ...
