Kenya has recurrently been on the spot despite ongoing police reforms, with security agencies being accused of continuing to infringe on human rights. Human rights groups, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority among other stakeholders say cases of human rights violations by security agencies remain prevalent.
They say many victims of such vices and more so extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances are yet to get justice due to among other things lack of goodwill, victimization of both witnesses and victims and shoddy investigations.
Indeed, extrajudicial execution of suspects is a crime and can, therefore, never be the answer to insecurity. Extrajudicial killings are dictatorship because it terrorizes the whole population under the cover of lawlessness, disguised as enforcing the law. A government that permits such killings is a dictatorship that must never call itself democracy. There is no democracy that allows or excuses extrajudicial killings.
Kenya is slowly redeeming itself on this front. Former Ruaraka OCS Nahashon Mutua has been sentenced to death after he was found guilty of killing a cellmate in 2013.
High court Judge Stella Mutuku on Thursday said the prosecution has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. She said Koome received inhumane treatment and there is no doubt that Mutua caused his death.
In a High Court sentencing by Judge Stella Mutuku in December last year, Mutua was found guilty of killing Martin Koome Imanyara, an inmate at Ruaraka police station despite trying to frame Kevin Odhiambo, another inmate at the station, for it. Koome was a miraa trader at Baba Dogo shopping centre in Ruaraka, Nairobi.
He had returned home drunk after the day’s work and is said to have “normal” domestic squabbles with his wife.
The prosecution showed the trial court how Mutua went above and beyond to obstruct justice, even offering an Sh1 million bribe to investigators besides trying to frame Odhiambo. The case is the first high profile conviction of an officer accused of extrajudicial killing.