NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 18- A team of detectives has been sent to Kisii to back up investigations into an incident where four people were lynched on claims they were witches.
This follows an incident in which residents of Mbanda village, Kitutu Chache North Constituency in Kisii County lynched three elderly women and a man before burning their bodies.
They were murdered following the night abduction of a secondary school student found unconscious on the path to his house.
Residents said the murdered four were part of a coven of witches who lured out the Nyagonyi Secondary student as he studied in his house on Saturday night. The charred remains of the victims were taken to the local mortuary.
Police say they want to investigate the incident and take action, if necessary. Such incidents have been common in the area with no action from authorities.
But experts say the killings have nothing to do with the accusations and it is largely a set-up by people known to them, who want to inherit either land or property from their aging relatives.
The killings happened in front of young children.
At one point, a man holding a crude weapon could be seen confronting an aged woman, who was pleading for mercy as a crowd watched from a distance.
“Police should not hide from the claims of mob justice. Those who killed them are known. They should face murder charges,” a resident who sought anonymity told Shahidi News.
Of those killed is an 85-year-old woman, police said.
The killings occurred in Marani Sub-County within Kisii County.
According to police statistics, 150 elderly men have been killed on allegations of witchcraft in the last two years in Kenya.
Similar killings have happened in parts of the Kenyan coast and more so in Kilifi, where sensitization programmes are currently running in partnership with local police and other stakeholders.
One such effort is through the REINVENT programme, which rolled out an innovative approach to community policing and accountability forums called SEMA Clinic(s). The programme is funded by the United Kingdom.
The Sema clinics are open forums that bring together the police and the community members to engage in dialogue on security issues that affect the area.
The messages are relayed in various ways including role-plays where the Police are actual cast in the plays. This is seen as a perfect way of curtailing retrogressive beliefs that kept the elderly at risk of killings due to allegations of witchcraft.
Through joint role-plays with the community art groups, they have been able to create awareness against a number of societal ills increasing the confidence in the Police.
Through Sema clinics, community representatives within the jurisdiction of a particular REINVENT police station are able to come together with the station’s leadership and a representation from the police oversight and accountability institutions, including the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), Internal Affairs Unit (IAU), Commission for Administration of Justice (CAJ), and Kenya National Human Rights Commission (KNHRC).
The objective of the forum is to provide an open space for the community to speak out about the state of policing services in their respective areas, allow for responses from the security agencies and provide the space to speak freely in the presence of the institutions.
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