UN official calls for sacking of Ali and Wako

As a first step, Prof Alston suggested, the President has to accept that police were involved in illegal killings. The acknowledgement will give the public an assurance that the government is committed to ending the vice, he said.

“The President of Kenya should publicly acknowledge the widespread problem of extrajudicial executions in Kenya. His silence to date is both conspicuous and problematic. Any serious commitment to ending impunity in relation to the widespread and systematic killings by the police should begin with the immediate dismissal of the Police Commissioner,” he said.

He accused police of forming death squads, such as Kwekwe, to execute people, then fabricate reasons for the killings. He also accused the force of failing to keep track of the killings and of always denying them.

Prof Alston said while Major Gen Ali and senior police officers denied that police were killing people, he had evidence of such executions. “The Police Commissioner in particular, along with various other senior officials, assured me that no such killings take place. But he and his colleagues appear to be the only people in the entire country who believe this claim,” he said.

He gave the example of Dr James Ng’ang’a Kariuki, the 29-year-old son of former Gatundu North MP Patrick Muiruri. According to police records, Prof Alston said, the victim was a bank robber and a member of the outlawed Mungiki sect.

“The police  officer responsible for the shooting filed a report that a bank robber and Mungiki member had been killed, thus invoking the magic formula designed to ensure that no one would question the need to shoot the suspect dead,” he said.

He said he had found out that the orders to execute members of the public were given by senior officers and that the independent police oversight body was toothless and lacking in resources to deal with police executions.

“The records of police killings should be centralised at police headquarters and complete statistics should be made public on a monthly basis, “he recommended.

Prof Alston said Mr Wako should resign on grounds of failing to prosecute police officers suspected of engaging in illegal executions. He accused Mr Wako of inventing excuses to explain his failure to prosecute those involved.

“The resignation of the Attorney General is an essential first step to restoring the integrity of the office and ending its role in promoting impunity in Kenya,” he said.

He also recommended that the powers to prosecute should be transferred from the AG’s Chambers to an independent department of public prosecutions. He described Mr Wako as the “embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of impunity”.

“Mr Wako has presided for a great many years over a system that is clearly bankrupt in relation to dealing with police killings and has done nothing to ensure that the system is reformed,” he said.

Prof Alston termed the Judiciary a big obstacle to the search for justice in cases of illegal executions. He said most of the people he interviewed said judges could be bribed to fix judgements and questioned the role of the Judicial Service Commission in streamlining the operations of the courts.

“The existing court system could not conceivably bring justice in relation to post election matters and this is an extraordinary indictment of the bankruptcy of the judicial system,” he said.

He added: “There is need to go back to the radical surgery to reform the judiciary and introduce new institutions such as a Constitutional Court and a Supreme Court.” The UN official asked the Government to establish a local tribunal to try suspects of post election violence.