Mother wants police officers who let mob lynch her son in Donholm charged

A mother from Meru County wants two police officers prosecuted for allegedly standing by as a mob beat her son, an intelligence officer, to death in Nairobi in August 2015.

Ms Alice Nkatha wants the two, and the mob that was supposedly captured on video last August beating up her only son, Mr Anthony Kimathi, 29, charged in court.

Police have since 2015 been investigating the death of Mr Kimathi, a National Intelligence Service (NIS) officer who came out of a car to try and ease a traffic snarl-up in Nairobi’s Donholm estate but was mistaken for a criminal because he was armed with two pistols.

“Even a thief is arrested with the items he has stolen and taken to a police station,” Ms Nkatha says, wondering why the people identified as police officers in the video shared online did not stop the crowd from killing her son.

This came as the family said it had written to the NIS in October 2015 to inquire about the progress of the investigation but there had been no response.

Mr Kimathi’s cousin, who was with the deceased in the car that fateful day, told the Nation immediately after the incident that a matatu tout had snatched a pistol tucked in the NIS officer’s trousers while he was controlling traffic.

It was then, said the relative who requested anonymity, that Mr Kimathi fired a warning shot with his other gun to enable him recover the one that had been snatched.

POLICE DISARMED KIMATHI

According to his account, two police officers later arrived in a car with government registration numbers, disarmed Mr Kimathi and left him at the mercy of the mob that was then convinced he was a robber, despite his attempts to identify himself as an NIS officer.

Ms Nkatha wonders why, despite there being video evidence with faces of some of those involved visible, nobody has been arrested and charged either for murder or abetting the killing.

“Some government officers told me they had given out their evidence and they said that those people have a case to answer,” she says, adding that she is frustrated the NIS is not helping in the matter.

Mr Kimathi’s family lawyer wrote to NIS Director-General Philip Kameru in October 2015, asking the security agencies to keep the promise to charge those involved.

The letter, signed by lawyer Kimathi Munjuri and seen by the Nation, notes that not much has been done since “direct emissaries” from NIS assured the family that investigations were complete and prosecution would follow after the suspects were identified.

“Unfortunately, we are now in the third month (October) since Mr Kimathi was killed in broad daylight... yet we have not officially heard or seen any legal action.

“We write to kindly request you to live to your word to bring to book Mr Kimathi’s murderers and those others that negligently allowed it to happen. We all need this to heal,” the letter says.

Mr Munjuri said the family is yet to get a response to the letter. Efforts to get a comment from NIS were unsuccessful.