Kenya:Nkaissery denies police are linked to suspects’ deaths

Allegations linking police to systematic extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of suspects a biased, palpable misrepresentation of facts and lack objectivity, the government has said.

In the first response to increasing cases of executions of suspects in the hands of police, Interior CS Joseph Nkaissery termed the allegation unsubstantiated, given in bad faith and aimed at undermining police efforts in crime control.

“The government is aware there is a conspiracy to undermine the excellent work of the police,” Nkaissery said.

International and local human rights organisations have in the past documented widespread and systematic cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

In 2014, the Independent Medico-Legal Unit recorded 199 cases of extrajudicial killings, and 97 by October 2015, including 85 summary executions perpetrated by polices and the Kenya Wildlife Service.

In its Error of Fighting Terror with Terror report released in September last year, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, a state agency, documented 120 cases of shocking human rights violations.

They included widespread, systematic and well-coordinated arbitrary arrests, extortion, illegal detention, torture, killings and disappearances.

In its Deaths and Disappearances: Abuses in Counterterrorism Operations in Northeastern Kenya report launched in July, Human Rights Watch recorded 34 cases of extrajudicial killings.

Eleven deaths of people last seen in state custody over links to terror group al Shabaab in the last eight months were also recorded.

The involvement of multiple units and lack of investigations indicated they were more than simply the work of rogue officers.

The report alleged that the high level of coordination and control by government or security officials showed the killings are sanctioned by the state.