THREE KENYAN policemen have been suspended from duty after they were caught on camera apparently murdering three suspects.
The pictures, taken by a passing motorist, were published in Kenya's Daily Nationnewspaper and have raised further questions about police accountability. A 2009 UN report found murders by police in Kenya were systematic and widespread.
The man who took the photograph said the suspects were travelling in a station wagon in Nairobi when three officers in a 4x4 stopped them. “The three men came out of the vehicle with their hands raised above their heads in surrender. They lay on the road as ordered by the police,” he said.
An officer frisked the men and recovered a pistol tucked into the waistband of one of them, he said.
A witness said he heard one of the officers shouting: "Lie down so we can finish you." The other officers then opened fire at the men at point-blank range in "sustained" gunfire, the witness said. Daily Nationreporters arrived 30 minutes later to find the bloodied bodies of three men in the road.
The paper reported a woman officer threatening one of its journalists, saying: “Are you one of them? We shall put you there too.”
Lang’ata police commander Augustine Kimantiri, who was in charge of uniformed officers at the scene, told journalists: “CID officers had challenged a gang of six suspicious men to stop, but instead they drew arms and fired at the officers, and a shoot-out ensued.” – (Guardian service)