Nairobi, Kenya — Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused Kenyan security forces of abducting, torturing and killing people believed to be leaders of anti-government protests that took place between June and August.
The group said security officers held abductees in unlawful detention facilities, including in forests and abandoned buildings, and denied them access to their families and lawyers.
Mary Muthoni Mwangi of Kirinyaga, in rural central Kenya, said she lost her son in the protests, in which thousands of young Kenyans demonstrated against a bill that would have increased taxes.
Her son, 20-year-old Kennedy Njeru, took part in a protest on June 25, she said, when demonstrators stormed the parliament after lawmakers passed the tax increase.
Mwangi said she searched for her son for four days, finally finding his body in the city mortuary. She said a postmortem examination found a bullet wound to his head.
Human rights groups say 61 people were killed across the country during the weeks of protests.
Human Rights Watch blamed Kenyan security agencies for the abduction, torture and killing of people seen as leading or taking part in the demonstrations.
Mausi Segun, head of HRW's Africa division, said, "Whoever the initial abductors were, the police were involved because people were taken to police stations and many times the torture happened while people were in police custody."
She added, "Those who are dead, we don't have details of what happened to them, but people who witnessed their abduction said that individuals who took them away were clearly security agents."
HRW researchers spoke to 75 people, including victims, family members, journalists, parliament staff and police officers.
The interviewees said that police officers hunted down protesters. But because the officers wore plain clothes, covered their faces and traveled in unmarked vehicles, it was difficult for family members, rights groups, lawyers and government agencies to trace victims' whereabouts.
Segun said some of those taken away were tortured and killed.
"Many of the bodies of those who have been abducted have showed up sometimes on the streets, sometimes in quarries, unmarked places where they have been dumped," she said.
"Many of those bodies have shown signs of torture and dismemberment of body parts, showing what they went through at the hands of their captors," she said. "Many of these bodies have not been released to family members."
Kenyan security forces deny that their officers were behind the abductions and killings.
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President William Ruto, speaking at a town hall gathering in Kisumu in late August, said he was not aware of any abductions and called on family members to forward the names to the government to take action.
Human Rights Watch said reports of abductions, missing people and killings are well documented and called on the president and other government institutions to hold those responsible to account.
On September 24, Mary Mwangi was among dozens of activists and victims' family members who tried to submit a list of the missing and dead to the president's office.
They were driven back with teargas.
Ruto ultimately declined to sign the tax increase into law.
