Idle AP camp in the limelight as IPOA probes advocate's death

Body of Josphat Mwenda being loaded into a police car after being found in Oldonyo Sabuk River. 1/7/2016 PHOTO BY WILLIS AWANDU/STANDARD

On an ordinary day, Syokimau Administration Police post is an idle place with one or two officers manning the untidy compound.

This is where lawyer Willie Kimani, his client Josephat Mwenda and taxi driver Joseph Muiruri were allegedly held before they mysteriously disappeared.

When The Standard on Saturday visited yesterday, the station was relatively busy, swarmed with a group of Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) officers and journalists.

This was after it emerged that the police had found two bodies of missing lawyer Kimani and Muiruri.

Yesterday, AP officers interviewed at the camp said they were all new and had been there for less than a week. They said they were therefore not privy to what happened at the camp on the day human rights groups claim the three were detained there.

There were no records on whether Kimani, Mwenda and Muiruri had been booked there.

“We don’t record statements here, the camp has not been gazetted,” said one of the officers.

In the compound are a container and a near-complete building that will have provincial administration offices to serve the fast-growing suburb.

On June 23, Mwenda, a boda boda operator, alongside Kimani and Muiruri, disappeared after attending a court hearing at the Mavoko law courts. Human rights groups claim that the three were held at the AP post the same night.

The bodies believed to be those of Kimani and Muiruri were found in a river in Ol-Donyo Sabuk River, Machakos County. A third body, thought to be that of Mwenda, slipped back into the river when the police and residents were trying to retrieve it.

The Syokimau AP camp came into the limelight when a group of human rights activists, led by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, said Mwenda, Kimani and Muiruri could have been held there the same day they disappeared.

When The Standard on Saturday arrived at 1 pmk, the IPOA officers were dusting the room where the three were allegedly held.

Earlier in the morning and the previous, another group from IPOA had been there to seek more details.

The AP officers found there said their colleagues who had been there earlier were off duty.

The cell where the three were allegedly held is a three-by-two-metre container with nothing but plastic containers inside. Next to the cell inside the same container is an office and two rooms housing the officers.

Down on the road, one boda boda operator said he knew Mwenda well as they had worked together.

Pointing to the direction of the station, the boda boda man, who refused to disclose his name because of the sensitivity of the matter, said, “Hawa askari wamesumbua Mwenda sana, mara mingi wanamshika na kumwachilia (These officers have really frustrated Mwenda, they have arrested and released him several times).”

Although he did not remember the dates, the motorcyclist said Mwenda’s woes started when he came out of hospital after been shot by an officer. “He started looking for justice after he was shot without any provocation. That was the beginning of his problems. Since then, the police randomly arrested him,” said the boda boda operator.

According to the human rights groups, Mwenda’s troubles with the officers began in Syokimau on April 10 last year, when he was stopped by two AP officers.

“According to witnesses, the AP officer shot the boda boda operator without provocation after which the officer transported him to hospital together with his colleague and later on put him in police custody,” said the group.