Rights organisations applaud Kenyan President William Ruto’s decision to commission investigations into police deaths that occurred without a warrant. One police station, according to Ruto, featured a shipping container where “people were being butchered,” according to Kenyan media on Wednesday. However, detractors point out that as vice president, Ruto said little about the matter, and they assert that police reform is essential to ending the practise.
Ruth Mumbi describes the day in 2017 when she claims a police officer killed her brother on the highway. Mumbi claims that, for a reason the family is still unsure of, her brother’s attacker shot him dead in broad daylight.
She claims that when police approached him and told him to kneel, he had just gotten off a motorcycle to relieve himself. He was then killed by gunfire. She claims that he was with a buddy who came to tell us that he had died.
Following President Ruto’s directive for inquiries into police killings, Mumbi’s family is one of many who are looking for answers concerning the deaths of their loved ones.
This Monday, Ruto told reporters that he had given Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority the job of looking into extrajudicial executions, including the September episode in which dozens of bodies were discovered in a river.
Rights organisations claim that his order is a positive move. Amnesty International Kenya’s executive director is Irungu Haughton.
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Irungu argued that it was significant that he made these statements given the upcoming high-profile cases involving commanding officers and individual officers who have been accused of abusing their positions and essentially committing murder. It will be critical to monitor how these cases develop in light of his overarching policy that extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances are unacceptable, Irungu said.
Otsieno Nyamwaya, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told VOA that while Ruto’s public stance on extrajudicial killings is significant, actual action that addresses a long-term solution to the problem is essential.
Part of what is required is for the government to resume police reforms, including the vetting of police officers, as originally planned under the 2010 Constitution. According to the vetting process, the police officers who were deemed unfit to serve were later reinstated, according to Otsieno.
Critics point out that throughout his time serving as Vice President under President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ruto hardly once mentioned extrajudicial executions.
According to Nyamwaya, his campaign against such killings has been sparked by the suspected police killing of two Indian IT professionals who were a part of Ruto’s election team last year.
According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, police killed at least 94 people without a warrant in 2022.
