Form commission of inquiry into extra-judicial killings

The police have confirmed the killing of Willie Kimani, the lawyer who went missing last week, taxi driver Joseph Muiruri who was driving him as well as Josephat Mwenda, a client of the lawyer.

The police informed the International Justice Mission (IJM), where Kimani worked, that they found the bodies of Kimani and Muiruri in the Ol-Donyo Sabuk River. Mwenda’s body was later retrieved from the same river.

The three went missing while returning from a court hearing of a case against Mwenda who had been shot by an Administration policeman.

The IJM has claimed that to cover up their crime, the police brought false charges against Mwenda, accusing him of resisting arrest and being in possession of bhang and a knife.

The organisation has, in turn, reported the matter to the Independent Police Oversight Authority, (IPOA), which launched an investigation into the complaint. It seems that an IPOA investigation motivated the concerned police officers to put pressure on the complainant and his lawyer, aimed at persuading them to drop the complaint. It would appear that when that did not work, the kidnapping and elimination of the three became the next option.

The search for the three has had the unintended consequence of shining some light on the phenomenon of extra-judicial executions. Just last week alone, bodies of unknown people were found in other places during the search for the three. These bodies belong to people who, like the three, were killed elsewhere before the bodies were dumped where they were found.

The only difference between the Mavoko three and the unidentified people whose bodies have turned up elsewhere is that the disappearance of the latter did not create the kind of media publicity that arose from the disappearance and subsequent killing of the three.

There is sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest that the security services of this country are running a programme of extra-judicial executions. The evidence is in the bodies of unidentified people that surface from time to time, about which there appears little official concern or reference.

Following the enactment of the 2010 Constitution, the police services have been the subject of specific targeting for reforms, which have involved the merger of various formations under a unified command, and the establishment of a mechanism for the vetting of serving police officers to determine suitability to remain in the service. There has also been the creation of the IPOA, as an autonomous entity that oversees the performance of the service, and to which complaints about misconduct can be referred.

At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest that the police services are reformed or even reforming as a result of the measures that have been developed for their reform.

The frequency with which suspected criminals turn up killed has inured the public to information about these killings which now seem accepted as a legitimate means of law enforcement. Some people have even argued that the only reason the Mavoko case has received so much attention is because a lawyer happened to be one of those killed this time round.

Other than upsetting the legal fraternity which, alongside the rest of the public, has taken the rare step of coming into the streets to demand justice, the killing of the lawyer is being viewed as a new low in the depths into which the police services have sunk. Although they work privately, lawyers have a public status as official intercessors on behalf of other people, including those in trouble with the law. In their official duties, lawyers do not usually fear that the cause that their clients are pursuing will be ascribed to them or that they will face the same risks as their clients. The killing of Kimani bursts the bubble that lawyers are a source of refuge for their clients, and increases the vulnerability that ordinary people, especially the poorest in society, feel in the hands of law enforcement.

In cases involving police misconduct, the investigations have rarely gone well. The investigations are often bungled, it seems, to protect the concerned police officers. It is for that reason that this case must be investigated independently of the police. The IPOA, which has investigative powers, must lead the investigations.

These latest killings contribute to overall picture that includes the recent unresolved slaying of Jacob Juma, which was widely viewed as having involved members of the security services. Despite the promised reforms, Kenya is sliding deep into gangland territory, where members of security services are using their official capacities to carry out private violence. There is a sense of helplessness, and even fear, at the top levels of the security services as personalised violence undermines and even supplants the official command structures. These latest killings are a microcosm of the pervasive impunity that has hit the services and which makes them a predator rather than protector of the public.

While we must demand justice for Kimani, Muiruri and Mwenda, we must also demand that there should be a shining of some light into the obvious decay that the security services have fallen into, and which has turned them into killing gangs in competition with the criminals they are supposed to be arresting.

The existing mechanisms are inadequate to address the emerging needs. Police vetting, for example, is designed to address individual suitability for service but cannot deal with the apparent existence of syndicated killing gangs in the police services. What the country needs is a commission of inquiry into extra judicial killings and related police misconduct.

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