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Kenya: Prisons Crowded Following Mt Elgon Militia Clampdown
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The Nation (Nairobi)
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Ken Opala
Nairobi
Sabaot Land Defence Force suspects netted through the security operation in Mt Elgon have led to crowding in local prisons and police cells.
Kitale Prison is holding twice its capacity, including 130 SLDF suspects.
Bungoma Prison is five times over capacity; one in every five inmates is charged with promoting warlike activities, a euphemism for being an SLDF member or sympathiser.
Boniface Wanyoike - the Kitale and Bungoma prisons coordinator at the Justice and Peace Commission - has been shuttling between the two penal institutions to advise authorities on the importance of outside jailing.
Stand in toilets
In one of his reports, Mr Wanyoike says Bungoma Prison, with 486 of its 1,410 inmates being SLDF suspects, is bursting to the seams.
At least 216 inmates are being kept in a cell meant for 60. As a result, Mr Wanyoike said, they take turns to sleep "while others are forced to stand in toilets".
The prison's 300 inmate capacity has been stretched to 1,410 inmates.
He added: "Half of the SLDF suspects have wounds" due to torture during arrests and screening.
Torture claims have tempered the security operation.
When this writer visited Bungoma Prison last week, medical officers from the Red Cross were treating the SLDF suspects from a tent pitched in the compound.
Mr James Sawe, the officer in charge of Bungoma Prison, referred this writer to his boss, the commissioner of Prisons.
"I would rather you speak with the commissioner himself," he said.
In Kitale, the prison has 1,250 inmates against a capacity of 436.
"We have more than the capacity but the situation is not as bad as it is being portrayed. We are coping with the situation," said Angus Masoro, the officer in charge of the Kitale Prison.
SLDF suspects and those arrested for defying the 7pm to 7am curfew are crammed in cells measuring 15 by 12 feet. Incidentally, nearly all SLDF suspects have injuries they claimed were sustained at the hands of the army. One of them claimed he was castrated during interrogation at Kapkota military screening base.
According to the suspects, the inhumane treatment included walking long distances on knees, crawling on bellies and lying on barbed wires.
Some were shot dead and their bodies dumped in forests, said a source in the area.
Lawyer Omundi Bw'Onchiri, who is representing about 800 SLDF suspects, says all of them were in one way or another tortured.
"All of them, including women, had injuries. There are reports some people have been killed and dumped in the forests."
In Kitale, 17-year-old Boiyo Sikowo, a pupil at Maseik Primary School in Mt Elgon, died of wounds allegedly inflicted by security personnel during his interrogation at Kapkota.
Sikowo, charged in a Bungoma court with warlike activities, died some days after being admitted at the Kitale District Hospital on April 16, 2008, according Mr Wanyoike.
Death
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Medical and prison officers confirmed the death. There was a sigh of relief a week ago when 800 people accused of warlike activities were granted bond and cash bail.
However, they had not been released ten days later.
"In some cases, the public has been beating up suspects before handing them over to the police," says Charles Owino Wahong'o, the operation's media liaison officer.
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