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Kenya: Killing Raises Doubts Over Elgon Operation
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The Nation (Nairobi)
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Ken Opala
Nairobi
The killing of a peasant in the ongoing Mt Elgon operation has raised fresh doubts in a security undertaking once touted a success against a ragtag militia that had earlier claimed 700 lives in just 18 months.
Consequently, lawyers and the Catholic Church want an independent investigations under the guidance of the UN "in order to establish those behind the torture and killing of innocent people" in Elgon and neighbouring areas.
Kitale Catholic bishop Maurice Crowley said: "We do not have medical reports to substantiate the claims (of torture and killing of suspects). We are being told that people are being sexually abused and others have their sexual parts severed.
"We want to know how they are captured and treated. Who tortures them? Only an independent inquiry can answer these questions. Somebody like Mr Bethwel Kiplagat can chair it."
Mt Elgon falls within the Kitale and Bungoma diocese of the Catholic Church. Mr Albinos Muga, the executive secretary of the justice and peace commission of the diocese says there "is proper torture" in military bases in Elgon.
The Law Society of Kenya, Bungoma chapter, seeks a commission "with unlimited powers" to investigate the torture and killing of suspects and innocent people, according chairperson John Makali.
All 1,200 people charged in Kitale and Bungoma courts over SLDF activities have claimed that soldiers tortured them. In fact, Red Cross has launched a medical camp inside Bungoma Prison in response to the torture claims.
In Kitale, 17-year-old Boiyo Sikowo of Maseik Primary School died in prison from injuries said to have been inflicted by torturers at Kapkota military base.
Nevertheless, it is the killing of 58 year-old Alfred Kisa Chesing'are, a squatter in Teldet Forest at the foothill of Mt Elgon, which has transfixed the operation and threatens to overturn the public goodwill enjoyed by the security personnel. His body, eyes gorged out and limbs broken, was recovered last Monday, exactly a week after police arrested and handed him over to the military.
Trans Nzoia OCPD Bernard Muli has denied reports that his officers arrested Chesing'are. And district commissioner Francis Mutie said he did not have information to make a reasonable comment about the case. The Government is not in the business of killing people, he said.
"It is the SLDF that has been killing people like rats and blaming it on authorities. These people (SLDF) are cunning. They cut off your tongue and ear if they suspect that you are an informer."
However, investigations by this writer established that an Administration police officer and two police reservists arrested Chesing'are on April 28, 2008 and detained him at Saboti Police station for two nights before handing him over to the military. Police would later retrieve his body in a thicket along a dusty road, a kilometre from Saboti Trading Centre.
Area councillor Gilbert Kitiyo and district officer Simon Osumba confirmed the arrest.
"Our people arrested him and he was later handed over to the military; we don't know what happened afterwards," Mr Osumba told this writer.
The residents know the names of the AP officer and the reservists who arrested Chesing'are.
When the writer met the AP in question, he retorted: "Please refer your questions to my seniors. I cannot comment."
But the revelation appears to have shaken him.
Mr Chesing'are, father of 16 and outspoken elder, often had run-ins with the administration and officials of a land cooperative in the area, neighbours say.
"He was set up by a cooperative official and a local administrator," said his widow, Paulina Chesang.
Top add onto her grief, the whereabouts of their son, Anthony, arrested by the military on May 1, 2008, are unknown.
Rotting bodies
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According to Paulina, Anthony is not at Kapkota and Kaptama military bases, where the army screens suspects before handing them over to police.
"I fear my son could be among the seven bodies rotting away there," she said, pointing in the direction of Teldet Forest, part of the vast Mt Elgon woodland complex.
But the OCPD dismissed as "mere speculation" reports that the military dumped seven bodies deep in the forest. Residents say forest guards and APs have blocked efforts to retrieve the bodies.
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