Three More Bodies Found Dumped In River Yala

SIAYA, Kenya, Mar 26- Even before the puzzle of tens of bodies found dumped in River Yala can be solved, three more bodies were found stuck under the rocks, police, and witnesses have told Shahidi News.

The local police were notified by locals who spotted the bodies.

It is not yet clear whether they were freshly dumped in the waters or not.

More than 25 bodies have been retrieved from the river with some already having been identified by relatives from as far as Nairobi.

Gem Sub-County Police Commander Charles Chacha said the bodies might have been swept from elsewhere by the waters.

The bodies were found near Ndanu falls of the River in Gem, Yala Sub-County.

Efforts have to retrieve the bodies have been ongoing, though police say it is challenging due to the ongoing heavy rains in the area.

“The rocks are also very slippery,” the police boss said.

A local man identified as Okero Okite is yet to be found, for him to assist with retrieving the bodies from the river, police said.

“The bodies are still stuck in between the rocks. You can see them from the river banks,” he said.

 Most of the bodies found in the river have undergone an autopsy.

The bodies had marks of torture.

Human rights organisations have been calling on the National Police Service to investigate the incident and ensure justice is served for those whose lives have been brutally taken and dumped in the river.

There are deep suspicions that the police are responsible for many of them and they are in the sights of rights activists over the bodies found in the Yala.

A while back, Boniface Mwangi, one of the two activists who first uncovered the existence of the bodies, said in a Twitter discussion that no ordinary Kenyan has the capacity to kill somebody and transport the body over 200km away to dump it in a river.

Human rights organisations have documented many cases of killings directly attributed to officers.

In 2019, Human Rights Watch reported that the police killed more than 21 men and boys in Nairobi’s low-income areas “apparently without justification, claiming they were criminals”.

Missing Voices, a group of organisations documenting extrajudicial killings, says 167 Kenyans were killed or disappeared in police custody in 2020.

The state in which some of the bodies recovered from the river were found also raises questions.

According to the diver who got them out, some had been pushed into sacks, which had then been sewn up.

Others had polythene bags over their heads – all signs of torture and murder, according to Haki Africa.