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UN official calls for sacking of Ali and Wako
United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Professor Philip Alston during an international media briefing at the UN headquarters in Gigiri Wednesday. He called for Kenya's Attorney General and Police Commissioner sackings over the killings. Photo/HEZRON NJOROGE
UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston on Wednesday condemned Kenya for allowing police to execute suspects and armed gangs to butcher the innocent.
Prof Alston asked President Mwai Kibaki to sack Police Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali, during whose watch, he said, special death squads were set up in the force.
He also called for the resignation of Attorney General Amos Wako, whom he scathingly referred to as the “embodiment of the phenomenon of impunity” in Kenya.
“Killings by police in Kenya are systematic, widespread and carefully planned. They are committed at will and with utter impunity on a regular basis by the Kenyan police. The police in Kenya are law unto itself and they kill with impunity,” he said at the UN headquarters in Gigiri, Nairobi.
Prof Alston was equally scathing of the Judiciary, which he described as “bankrupt” and an “obstacle to justice” for those whose loved ones were unlawfully killed.
Mt Elgon violence
Prof Alston, a UN Special Rapporteur on unlawful executions, has been in Kenya on a 10-day fact-finding mission. He has been gathering evidence on police death squads, post election violence and the handling of the violence in Mt Elgon.
During the release of his preliminary report, he asked the President to publicly acknowledge that police executions were a serious problem and to have both Mr Wako and Maj Gen Ali removed for failing to stop it.
The Government is under no obligation to act on Prof Alston’s findings, which will be presented to the next session of the UN Human Rights Council. But doing nothing could reflect badly on the government.
Prof Alston said Kenya had a good standing in the world but that it’s reputation would likely be stained by the extent of police executions. The government reacted to the report with some confusion: Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua announced that Kenya rejects it and accused Prof Alston of “almost infringing the sovereignity” of the country.
Illegal executions
But Prime minister Raila Odinga, appearing to speak for the same government, welcomed the report and said it will be acted on “in totality”. “We must act on the report. No one will be spared. I am not willing to compromise on this one,” the PM said, adding that the government would not allow excuses such as the Kenya’s judicial system to justify illegal executions, noting that all suspects must be properly apprehended and taken to court as required by law.
Dr Mutua described Prof Alston as having exceeded his mandate and said his report did not dialogue “and appears to have been made in bad faith.” He said the government found it inconceivable “that someone who has been in the country for less than 10 days can purport to have conducted comprehensive and accurate research on such a serious matter, as to arrive at the recommendations he made.”
“In this preliminary response, the government rejects the findings and recommendations made in a press statement made by the UN Special Rapporteur Prof Philip Alston,” Dr Mutua said.
“Kenya’s standing in the international community is on the line and the only way to redeem its reputations is to take steps, however radical they may be,” he said.
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I think the best people to tell us whether prof was fair or not are, parents whose chidren were beheaded by mungiki, those who suffered female genital mutilation through Mungiki, rape victims and matatu business operators who have been forced to be paying loyalties to mungiki.
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Foreigner or not lets stick to the issues at hand. Are these recommendations good for Kenyans? yes! The police and AG work for us and it is high time people acted like it. I'm so sick of watching people getting railroaded all the time. We the people have the right to fire them whether in a civil way or forcefully. These people breath the same air that we do and bleed just like us. So why do we stand aside and allow them to do whatever they want?
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Wako is the main problem in this saga.AN AG who is toothless, a see no evil hear none, ever smiling instead of acting, best in murder cover up whenever he feels he might rub off the executive shoulders the wrong way,a government advisor who advises nothing,a puppet ofANY REGIME a refined skeemer and a professional survivor whose credentials are only in paper and translates to nothing on the ground,he follows the wind,is a coward and abbets corruption, the only action we know of him? NOLLE PROSEQUI
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