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Kenya: Man Found Dead After Arrest
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The Nation (Nairobi)
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Ken Opala
Nairobi
On April 28, just two weeks ago, Alfred Kisa Chesing'are left his home to pursue a debtor in Teldet Village, Saboti. His two sons, who had been arrested during a military swoop on suspected SLDF sympathisers in the area, had been released from Kapkota camp and needed urgent medical attention.
"He wanted the money to offset medical expenses for the boys who had been tortured at Kapkota," his wife Paulina Chesang said.
But on the way, he met a police corporal from Teldet Administration Police camp and two police reservists who arrested him.
Interrogated
As soon as the 58-year-old squatter got to Saboti Police Station, he was locked up in a cell where he spent the night. Early the next day, he was taken to DO Simon Osumba's office, a few metres away, where the administrator and a police officer from the station interrogated him.
Later that day, Mr Chesing'are told his wife that the police had promised to release him in the evening. It was not to be.
The following day, on April 30, around 3pm, the military visited the police station. Paulina, who had come to pick her husband, was shocked to see him being bundled into a waiting Army truck. Mr Chesing'are's two daughters, who had accompanied their mother, screamed with horror.
In the truck was Mr Chesing'are's uncle, a former Saboti parliamentary aspirant, who had also been arrested in connection with the Mount Elgon militia.
The whereabouts of a number of his relatives arrested by the military are still unknown, Paulina says.
Earlier, the area councillor, Mr Gilbert Kitiyo, had held discussions with Mr Osumba on the possibility of having the old man released. "Mr Chesing'are is innocent," the civic leader had told the administrator, "He is being set up by a top official of a lands co-operative society."
In SMS exchanges with the councillor, the administrator had confirmed that Mr Chesing'are was fine.
The military lorry ferried Mr Chesing'are back home the following day. Family members and neighbours say he was in bad shape. He was naked and could hardly walk.
The soldiers wanted him to show them his sons and the guns they claimed he had. He showed them his sons, but denied possession of any guns. They assaulted him.
Later, the military officers who seemed quite drunk, according to one of the neighbours, seized Mr Chesing'are's in-laws (Jacob Simatwa and Steve Simatwa) and a son, Anthony Chesing'are.
It is not clear whether his other sons, Isaac and Amos, were also arrested since their whereabouts are not known.
Four days later, a herder discovered Mr Chesing'are's mutilated body in a thicket along a dusty stretch, just a kilometre from Saboti trading centre.
The eyes had been gouged out and limbs broken. The body is lying at the Trans Nzoia District Hospital mortuary.
But Trans Nzoia police commander Bernard Muli claims that police did not arrest Mr Chesing'are.
Mr Osumba, the DO, said: "Our people picked up the old man and handed him over to the military. We don't know what happened to him after that," he said.
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The joint police/military operation says the only information it has is that a man's body was found in a thicket.
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