- Kenyan government has vowed to study and work on the findings of the report presented by the United Nations investigator, urging government to take action on senior police officials for their alleged involvement in the killings of more than 100 detainees in police custody, Justice minister Martha Karua has said.
Although the minister said the government does not fully agree with the content of the report by the UN Special Rappoteur on extra-judicial killings, she said the country will do its part to look into some of the issues raised in the report.
“Whereas we may not agree with the entire statement, the government acknowledges the need to accelerate the pace and extent of necessary and imperative reforms and to focus on the issues of concern to all citizens,” she said.
Ms Karua has however accused, Prof Philip Alston, the author of the report as being one sided, saying it mainly used accounts from the non governmental organisations, without consulting other local agencies.
Prof Alston had in his report accused the Kenyan police of killing people with impunity, saying most of the junior officers are acting from the directive orders of the seniors.
He also said his visit to the East Africa nation had backed accusations that security forces killed 500 suspected members of the outlawed Mungiki crime gang, 400 political demonstrators during a post-election crisis last year, and 200 suspected rebels from the western region of Mount Elgon.
He said the death squads were set up upon the orders of senior police officials to exterminate the Mungiki, an underground religious sect reported by media to be responsible for a range of criminality in the capital, Nairobi.
Some sections of the report included evidence revealing that the police and military committed organised torture and extrajudicial executions against civilians during the 2008 operation to flush out a militia known as the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF).
The report which has received much criticism from the government, according to local newspaper reports, has urged Kenya to address some of the concerns raised in the reports or face impeachment by the international community.
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