Ernest Mpinganjira
22 January 2006
Nairobi — The Tanzanian Government has finally admitted the culpability of its security forces, saying they are the principal perpetrators of the spiralling crime.
This follows a spate of armed robberies in major towns in which trigger-happy police and military officers, under the guise of fighting crime, have shot dead innocent people.
The latest incident involved the mistaken shooting to death of three brothers, their business associate and a taxi-driver on suspicion of being armed gangsters in Dar es Salaam last weekend.
The murders, which have alarmed the country, justified long-held view that gangsters have infiltrated the police force. This has resulted in non-arrest of suspects in robberies; smuggling and drug trafficking that have hit the country since the beginning of last year. The recent admission by President Jakaya Kikwete that the wave of armed crime is home-grown and that the country's disciplined forces are inept, and instead abet crime came as no surprise to foreign residents, who are often targets of brazen police brutality that culminates in indiscriminate shooting and arrests.
Throughout last week, the police force has been at pains to explain the killings of Mathias Lugombe, Sabinus Chigumbi and his brothers Ephraim Chigumbi and Juma Ndugu.
The incident sparked off debate about extreme police brutality in the course of their duty against the backdrop of rising insecurity.
Initially, Dar es Salaam Regional Police Commander Abdallah Zombe attempted to explain the incident away as an act of foreign criminals. But evidence, mounting since the shooting point to the possibility that the police premeditated the incident.
Characteristically, the police tried to wad off blame and accusations of gross violation of human rights by blaming it on either Ugandans or Kenyans.
They planted incriminating evidence on the victims to prove that they were culpable, but the attempt fell flat on the face after the victims' Tanzanian relatives showed up to claim the bodies.
The police had faked receipts to support their argument that the dead had refuelled in Machakos, Kenya, on their way to committing a crime in Dar es Salaam. But relatives countered by saying that the four businessmen were ruby gemstone dealers who had travelled from the south to Tanzania's commercial capital, where they were shot dead on suspicion of robbing a jewellery shop in Kariokoo in downtown Dar es Salaam.
An autopsy performed on Wednesday showed that the bullets entered from nape and exited through the mouth, implying that they were shot from behind.
The autopsy results, explained Philemon Mutakyamirwa - the lawyer of the families of the victims - contradicted claims by RPC Zombe that they had engaged police in a shoot-out as they had their backs to the police.
Further, the owner of the shop where jewellery of unknown value and Tsh300,000 in cash was stolen, Jafari Amir, told the police that the submachine gun allegedly recovered from the vehicle the four were in was not the gun the robbers grabbed at the shop.
In spite of the shopkeeper's first-hand account of the crime at his shop, Zombe maintained that that Amir is not "an expert at identifying his assailants," and therefore his account was "wrong."
After years of denial of the existence of pervasive graft in the police force and its involvement in blatant abuse of human rights, the new government finally pulled the veil off accusing it of being responsible for the sharp rise in crime. He blamed the police for turning the country into an expensive investment destination compared with the other members of the East African Community - Kenya and Uganda.
Kikwete told the police that the current levels of crime are injurious to Tanzania's international image as a favoured investment destination in the region.
His directive to Inspector General of Police Omari Mahita to go the whole hog and rid the force of rotten elements was received as confirmation of the public secret that past governments had shied away from confronting the vice head on and allowed it to fester.
As a result, foreign nationals complain that they often find themselves in police cells for crimes they never committed want.
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