Activist killed as Mungiki returns

The leader of an NGO which organised Mungiki protests that paralysed transport in many parts of the country on Thursday was later in the evening gunned down near the University of Nairobi.

Mr Oscar Kamau King’ara, the executive director of Oscar Foundation, an NGO with links to the Mungiki, was shot dead by unknown assailants, sparking unrest among University of Nairobi students.

Mr Kingára was in the company of a colleague, identified as a former official of the Students Union of the University of Nairobi, who was also killed.

The killing came at the end of a day when Mungiki re-asserted itself with widespread protests, paralysing transport and shutting down some towns for long periods in the course of the day. Sect members blocked roads using hijacked long haul trucks, burning barricades, and stones and forced public transport operators off the roads by intimidation. They also forced businesses to close in many parts.

The worst affected towns were Nairobi, Kiambu, Nyahururu, Nyeri, Naivasha, Embu, Nakuru and Molo, among others. In Thika, members of the public lynched two young men whom they accused of being Mungiki members.

Meanwhile, police early on Thursday moved in to clear the roads and arrested 125 suspects, including 52 in Nairobi, 35 in Molo, 18 in Kajiado and 5 in Naivasha.

Police said known Mungiki members had circulated notes to business people and matatu (public minivan) owners threatening to kill those who did not shut down their business. The sect has in the past beheaded matatu crews to extort money.

Serious threat

Kenya National Youth Alliance, the political arm of the Mungiki, said it did not call the protests. Its spokesman, Mr Gitau Njuguna Gitau, said: “If our members participated, it was on individual capacity. The two people killed at Thika are thugs and not our members.”

The Mungiki has grown from a quasi-religious organisation advocating a return to traditional Kikuyu values to a large, complex criminal organisation with multiple leaders and rival factions.

On Thursday, Police Commissioner Maj Gen Hussein Ali described “Mungiki is the single most serious threat to internal security today”, adding that the sect was “very vicious” with a blood-soaked history of “beheadings, extortion and carjackings”.

He said Mungiki had “drawn encouragement from the report” of a UN Rapporteur on Human Rights and “pro-Mungiki civil society groups”.

Criminal gang

Prof Philip Alston, the UN official, in his preliminary report, accused police of executing suspects without trial and recommended Gen Ali’s sacking and the resignation of Attorney-General Amos Wako.

Following the criticism and public pressure, the police disbanded a the Kwekwe Squad, a specialist unit set up to stamp out the sect, which was accused of brutality and illegal executions. The police also their softened approach in dealing with the protests on Thursday, with many of the officers confronting the mobs unarmed and focusing on clearing the roads.

Following the shooting last evening, police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said the killing was the work of criminals, adding: “Judging by the timing and the place of the incident, it was designed to cause student unrest.”

Mr Kingára had become the most vocal defender of the rights of the Mungiki and it is not unknown for rivalries within the sect to end in gangland executions.

The Alston report accused the police of setting up death squads to unlawfully kill suspects. Commenting on the report on Thursday, Maj Gen Ali dismissed it as having “a credibility problem”, “fiction” and “most probably an act of plagiarism” because the rapporteur had not allowed himself sufficient time to investigate complaints.