NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 11- The unsightly images of dead bodies floating in River Yala have opened another box in Pandora’s collection of extrajudicial killings in Kenya.
In the last two months alone, locals have reported retrieving over 30 bodies from the river in what is now turning out to be a well-orchestrated plan where victims are killed elsewhere before being dumped into River Yala.
Attendants at the Yala Sub-County Hospital Mortuary have been receiving decomposing bodies that are neatly parceled while others with ropes hanging on their necks, some body parts missing.
Distraught families with cases of missing persons, some having travelled from as far places as Mombasa and Nairobi, have reported finding their relatives in the Yala morgue.
The discovery of Yala bodies has again rekindled conversations about the role of the police in the neVer ending spate of cold-blood murders in Kenya.
The police have since come out to discount the script provided by locals in Yala about the number of bodies retrieved from the river and the time span.
Police say less than 20 bodies have been fished out of the river in the last two years – assertions that sharply contradict with first-hand accounts of locals and human rights activists involved in the actual repatriation of bodies out of the Yala waters.
The first question regards what the police have done in the last two years since bodies started appearing in River Yala. What is the state of investigations into the macabre murders?
Who are the suspects involved in the crimes? How come the police have not issued a national alert on the atrocities and why has it been impossible for the police to stop the dumping of bodies in the river, two years down the line?
From relatives’ accounts, some of the victims went missing hundreds of kilometers away from the Yala where their bodies were eventually discovered.
Why are the police unable to intercept the perpetrators who clearly travel miles to dispose of the bodies?
Some of the victims are believed to have been thrown into the river atop the Yala River Bridge. Why haven’t the police arrested any suspects in the ritual that now spans two years?
The low return of convincing answers by the police has led many Kenyans to believe that the security agencies are involved in the forced disappearances and eventual deaths of the victims.
That some of the bodies are of former police officers only complicates the role of the police in the fiasco.
Families are undergoing frustrating procedures in an attempt to the bodies of their relatives from the Siaya morgue in part due to clumsy response by the police.
Kidnappings and disappearances in the hands of the police are becoming a daily occurrence in Kenya.
On February 2, 2021, Marsabit-based businessman Roba Abduba Sereka was bundled into a Land cruiser hardtop at gunpoint along Muhoho Road in Nairobi’s South C estate; in an incident that was captured by the CCTV cameras.
His family is yet to know his whereabouts despite repeated calls to the government to come through with information regarding the abduction.
Mr. Roba now joins a litany of Kenyans who have disappeared in the hands of the police, some eventually being discovered lifeless like the Yala victims.
Provision of security to life and property is a cardinal duty of any government worth its name.
Despite the rhetoric from the state, including by President Kenyatta, that security agencies would step up in their mandate, the murderous hands are going about their business unhindered.
This is particularly disturbing especially in the backdrop of the impending national elections.
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