Kenyans Executed in 5-Year Crackdown
Pastor Dale Morgan
Kenyans Executed in 5-Year Crackdown*
By TOM ODULA
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 25, 2007; 8:56 PM
NAIROBI, Kenya -- As many as 8,040 young Kenyans have been executed or
tortured to death since 2002 in a police crackdown on an outlawed sect,
according to a new report by a group of Kenyan lawyers.
Another 4,070 young men have gone missing between August 2002 and August
2007 after being held in police custody, said the report by the Oscar
Foundation Free Legal Aid Clinic-Kenya released Saturday.
The report does not offer evidence on who was responsible for the deaths
and disappearances but said most of the missing were last seen in police
custody.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe dismissed the report as "a document not
worth responding to."
"It is fictitious and the people disseminating it have a questionable
character and motive," Kiraithe told The Associated Press.
Police began a crackdown on the sect called Mungiki when it was outlawed
in March 2002 after at least 20 people were killed in fighting between
it and a rival gang.
Mungiki claims to have thousands of adherents, all drawn from the
Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe. The group, whose name means "multitude"
in the Kikuyu language, was inspired by the bloody Mau Mau rebellion of
the 1950s against British colonial rule.
Mungiki began as a group promoting traditional Kikuyu practices,
including female genital mutilation, but gradually became involved in
extortion, murder and providing hired muscle to politicians.
The new report is based on interviews with relatives, police records of
when the young men were in police custody, autopsy reports and other
records kept by the campaigning group, said the foundation's executive
director, Kamau Kingara. The group began by offering legal help to
people living with AIDS six years ago, but over the years has taken on
other cases.
This latest report follows one from the state-funded Kenyan National
Commission on Human Rights released earlier this month that linked
police to the deaths of more than 450 young men in the past five months
in a crackdown on Mungiki.
That report did not explicitly blame the police for the deaths, but said
"circumstantial evidence" linked the police to the killings and said the
force seemed to be blocking efforts to find the killers.
A Mungiki leader, Gitau Njenga, said that a clique within President Mwai
Kibaki's administration was using the police to kill suspected Mungiki
adherents.
Njenga also denied the group was responsible for the killings earlier
this year of more than 27 people, many of whom were beheaded.
"The Mungiki has nothing to do with the beheadings. ... The police
should investigate the true perpetrators of these crimes," Njenga said.
The allegations and denials of police brutality come at a sensitive
time. President Kibaki is seeking re-election this December. His biggest
challenger, Raila Odinga, has promised to rid the country of Mungiki
within a month if he is elected president.
Mungiki members threatened to disrupt the elections and circulated
leaflets in July calling on Kenyan youth to rise up against the government.