Bizarre murder of trio a low moment for Kenya

This has been a low week for the Kenyan human rights community and the legal profession in general. On Thursday last week young Willie Kimani, a human rights lawyer employed by the International Justice Mission, left home, joined up with his client and sought to advance his client’s interests within the framework provided by the law.

He appeared in the Mavoko law courts, made his normal appearances and then headed home, looking forward to reconnecting with his young wife and child. Unfortunately for Willie, his client Josephat Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri, the ill-fated taxi driver who sought to drive them back to Nairobi, that trip ended fatally. The background to the matter is that Mwenda had been the victim of a shooting by a police officer. When he pursued the case against the officer, a series of acts of intimidation followed, including the filing of false charges most probably to try and “encourage” him to withdraw his complaint. He never withdrew and that is how Willie’s employer got roped into the matter and Willie ended up in Mavoko.

After leaving Mavoko, all the three of them, Willie, Mwenda and the taxi driver disappeared. Their bodies were found this last Friday in Ol Donyo Sabuk River. While it’s not always right to imagine the worst of the police, one would have to be criminally naïve to see no connection between the acts of a human rights defender and his insistent client against a police officer and the former’s brutal assassination.

I have lived long enough in Kenya to know that some police officers routinely brutalise citizens who threaten to pursue complaints for wrongful police action, the human rights protections in the Constitution notwithstanding. Until the contrary is proved, I will assume that the trios’ brutal murder is directly related to the complaint against the police and that Willie has paid the ultimate price that a lawyer can pay to advance the cause of justice.

This killing marks a terrifying stage in the progression of impunity and abuse of police power. It is most chilling because of its brazenness, and the insidious “mtado?” confidence by the perpetrators that they will get away with it. Kenya may quickly join the woeful ranks of the DRC, Colombia and other countries where “enemies” of the security forces are routinely “disappeared”.

While Kenya has always had rogue policemen, such rogueness has generally been in the peripheral of the force and has tended to avoid acts in which there is too much risk of exposure.

If Willie, Mwenda Muiruri’s murder is treated as just another unfortunate event in Kenya’s human rights story, it will legitimise rogue police behaviour and send a chilling message to those who would dare challenge police wrongdoing. I am gratified by the actions taken by the LSK in pushing this matter to the fore of national discourse.

While I am pleased by the assurances of IG Boinett that all will be done to catch and punish the culprits, I am concerned that it took a nudge from the LSK and the US Government to take any significant step. Investigations into this horrible crime must not just be done but must be seen to be done, effectively and openly by an independent institution like IPOA leading the investigations. The leadership of the police force must also recognise that Willie’s killing is a symptom of a growing problem that must be arrested; where some policemen are now a law unto themselves. Crossing their path or those they protect is a death sentence.

Lawyers and indeed other professionals must not relent in demanding action for if the police can target a lawyer for doing his work, what hope is there for the rest of society? Is there a role for government in this process? Yes.

While this specific assassination may have been pushed by rogue cops, the impunity environment in which they can dare carry out such acts can only be redeemed by the State taking severe steps to stamp out the impunity in the sector. The vigour and zest we see in Gen Joseph Nkaiserry against the opposition protestors must for a moment be directed towards rogue security officers in his backyard.

Let Willie’s and his two compatriots blood not be in vain.