An investigation by a global human rights lobby into the handling of the anti-government protests by security forces paints a horrific picture.
Wanton arrests, killings and torture at the hands of police officers made demonstrators pay a heavy price in opposing the Finance Bill, 2024, the Human Rights Watch said.
Security forces drawn from elite formations such as the National Intelligence Service, Anti-terror squad, DCI and Recce squad responded with lethal force against unarmed protestors “through abductions, arbitrary arrests, tortures and killings [targeted at] perceived leaders of the protest”.
The lobby found that security officers held abductees without respecting their legal rights, in unlawful detention facilities - including in forests and abandoned buildings - and denied them access to their families and lawyers.
Otsieno Namwaya, the Associate Africa director at the organisation, told the Star that the report published detailed only 10 per cent of the materials collected, adding that the findings were gruesome.
“The police acted outside of the law with lethal force that was disproportionate. We are calling for accountability,” he said.
In its probe, Human Rights Watch says it talked to journalists, protesters, Parliament staff and MPs who were either there on June 25, or viewed CCTV recordings of events.
About an hour before protesters stormed Parliament buildings, police shot at least six people dead along Parliament Road at the entrance to the Kenyatta Mausoleum and another two at the entrance to the Senate buildings, the lobby said.
“Witnesses also said at 2:32 pm, when protesters brought down the Parliament fence wall on the Intercontinental Hotel side and surged toward the Mausoleum, plainclothes GSU officers shot about seven protesters dead and threw their bodies behind the Mausoleum.”
Witnesses said plainclothes officers atop Parliament buildings also shot scores of others.
The victims include one Criminal Investigations officer and two
soldiers.
