While Mungiki negotiations are in place -killings by government forces goes on in Mt.Elgon

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While Mungiki negotiations are in place -killings by government forces goes on in Mt.Elgon

Story by KEN OPALA

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.

Security officers on patrol in Mt Elgon where the Sabaot Land Defence Force has been accused of killing 700 people in the past one year. Residents now claim that they have been subjected to human rights abuses. Photo/FILE
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 Chesingare, 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 Chesingare. 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 Chesingare 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 dont know what happened afterwards, Mr Osumba told this writer.

The residents know the names of the AP officer and the reservists who arrested Chesingare.

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 Chesingare, 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

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.

The Mt Elgon security operation media liaison officer Charles Owino Wahongo says the police will open an inquest into the killing of Chesingare.

Those claiming he was killed by police should come forward with the information. But whoever may have had a hand in killing the old man will have to face the law, Mr Wahongo said.

He said Chesingares family is yet to file a complaint about the killing.

The officer says only four people have been killed in since the military exercise started early March. But residents are convinced that hundreds of youth may have been tortured to death or killed in the bombing of caves. The operation has released just four bodies, two each at Bungoma and Webuye mortuaries.

Our objective is to ensure that people in Mt Elgon get their peace. We are achieving our objectives, Mr Wahongo said.

Indeed, a survey confirmed that many people are returning to their homes.

Fields, including those at the epicentre of the murderous militia operations, have been ploughed and trading centres have re-opened since August 2006 when the murderous militia displaced two in every three of Mt Elgons 140,000 residents. The insurgency spilled over into Saboti and Kwanza areas of the larger Trans Nzoia.

The larger public appears to accept the operation.

A local chief said the area was peaceful and people can move freely. But he asked not to be named because, he claimed, soldiers have cautioned administrators against giving information to the Press.

In Kimama Village, the site of the killing of 22 people on New Years Eve, children stroll on the paths. Shops and schools have re-opened.

However, Chesingares killing has shocked the security apparatus and raised the spectre of divisions in the operation, which, according to sources, has turned into an exclusive undertaking by the military that was initially meant to offer the police logistical support.

Police sources say the military is single-handedly guiding the operation.

They arrest, screen interrogate and merely hand over the suspects to us to take to court. We even dont know how to prosecute without witnesses and evidence against the suspects, said a police officer who has been dealing with suspects from Kapkota military base.

The military operation zones at Kapkota and Kaptama are out of bounds to police and the provincial administration, those interviewed claimed.

Police say they are in the dark as to how to deal with Chesingares issue.

What we know is that the military is superior to us so they are not answerable to us, said a police officer in Mt Elgon.

Cannot find them

It is not lost on the police force that a soldier guilty of an offence can only be court-martialled and not subjected to a civilian court. This raises questions about the plausibility of the envisaged inquest into Chesingares death.

Mr Makali, who is representing a civic leader and assistant chief charged over SLDF activities, says hundreds were tortured before being tossed into courts. A UN tribunal with unlimited powers should investigate torture and killing at the hands of the military, he says.

Warders at Kitale and Bungoma prisons say hundreds of people have been streaming to the institutions in search of friends and relatives arrested in the operation but they cannot find them and they do not know what to do next.

[http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=2&newsid=123120]

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