Police abused refugees, says rights agency

Police tortured, raped and arbitrarily detained more than 1,000 refugees on pretext of fighting terrorism, a human rights report revealed on Wednesday.

Police from four units unleashed a wave of abuses against Somali and Ethiopian refugees, asylum seekers and Somali Kenyans in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate between mid-November 2012 and late January this year, according to the Human Rights Watch.

Witnesses and victims of the abuses told HRW that police from the General Service Unit, Regular Police, Administration Police and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) committed the atrocities.

They accused the squads of beatings, theft, extortion, and arbitrary arrest in inhuman and degrading conditions.

The report, based on 101 interviews, said many women and children were among the victims.

‘Weeks of hell’

HRW senior researcher Gerry Simpson said Kenyan authorities should immediately open an independent public investigation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – which has not spoken publicly about the abuses – should document and publicly report on any future abuses against refugees.

“Refugees told us how hundreds of Kenyan police unleashed 10 weeks of hell on communities close to the heart of Nairobi, torturing, abusing, and stealing from some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people,” he said while releasing the report in a Nairobi hotel.

Mr Simpson said of the people interviewed, 96 are registered as refugees and allowed to stay in the country.

They narrated to the rights group how police raided their homes late at night. “They would drag men, women and children out of their beds. They stole their belongings and extorted large sums of money from them.”

According to the agency, the refugees and Kenyans of Somali origin were subjected to abuses by security agents who accused them of being terrorists.

The report indicates that police may have been retaliating over 30 attacks on law enforcement officials and civilians in Kenya since October 2011.

Mr Simpson said: “To date only one person — a Kenyan national not of Somali ethnicity — has been convicted for one of the attacks.”

The organisation wants the Deputy Inspectors General of the Regular Police and Administration Police to instruct the police to stop rape, beatings, and other unlawful violence against refugees, asylum seekers, and Somali Kenyans, some of which Mr Simpson said amounted to acts of torture.

They also said the police should cease arbitrarily detaining refugees, asylum seekers, and Somali Kenyans.

They singled out Pangani Police Station saying most of those arrested were detained there.

HRW also asked the National Police Service Commission and the Independent Police Oversight Authority to investigate commanding officers — including the police inspector general and his two deputies — responsible for police units active in Eastleigh between mid-November 2012 and late January 2013.

“They should create a special committee of inquiry to report on the extent and nature of police abuses,” the report reads in part.

Further, HRW wants a committee formed in 2010 to investigate law enforcement abuses against Somali Kenyans and Somali refugees in North Eastern region to release its findings.