(Sh.M.Network) -- Armed men pulled two passengers off a bus on the Kenyan coast earlier this month. The body of one man was found two days later with his eyes gorged out, nose chopped off and genitals missing, and a human rights...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
group says Kenyan police executed the man -- a terror suspect.
Al-Amin Kimathi of the Mohammedan Human Rights Forum says the killing of Samir Hashim Khan and the disappearance of Mohammed Kassim-Bekhit, who is blind, is a common strategy employed by Kenyan police when they cannot build a case against suspects.
Police front man Eric Kiraithe dismissed the allegation that police potted Khan as "nonsense." He said police are investigating and those behind the killing will face justice, even if they are found to be coppers.
"Whoever has information should give it ... but not sit there and point fingers making outrageous allegations," Kiraithe said Friday.
Kimathi pointed to the 2007 killings and forced disappearances of at least 500 youth associated with a gang called the Mungiki. The gang, which ran extortion rackets out ofNairobislums, was known for beheading its victims. Several local and international human rights groups including a government-funded human rights group blamed the killings and abductions on the police.
| The police denied responsibility and claimed a leadership struggle in the Mungiki gang led to the deaths. None of those murders has ever been solved. |
Kimathi said the bus Khan and Kassim-Bekhit were traveling in was boxed in by cars near a supermarket chain in the coastal town of Mombasaon March 10. Heavily gunnies exited the cars and dragged the two men from the bus, according to Kimathi.
Kimathi said police denied holding the two when relatives and friends inquired if they had tossed in the clink them. Truck drivers later found Khan's mutilated body dumped in a national park near a highway.
The Kenya-basedMohammedanYouth Center-- which has pledged allegiance to the powerful al-Qaeda-linked Somali turban group al-Shabaab
... successor to the Islamic Courts...
-- said in an Internet posting on Thursday that Kenyan Mohammedans should rise up in response to the death.
It said the death signaled thatKenyahas embraced counter-terrorism techniques that would "take its terror war to the doorstep of every Mohammedan" inKenya, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
Al-Shabaab forces of Evil have vowed to carry out a large scale attack inNairobiin retaliation forKenyasending troops intoSomalia. The Kenyan government blames al-Shabaab forces of Evil for several kidnappings on Kenyan soil, including those of four Europeans. The attacks greatly harmed the coastal tourism industry.
Al-Shabaab forces of Evil bombed crowds watching the World Cup final in Uganda in 2010, killing 76 people.
Kenyapolice are under pressure to prevent an al-Shabaab attack. Already several grenade attacks that police blamed on al-Shabaab have been carried out insideKenya.
Kenya's police force, however, is constrained from carrying out its work because of poor pay, which has led to corruption, and because of a lack of facilities. Few police here have cars, for instance, and those who do are given little fuel.
Britanniaearlier this month donated six cars to the anti-terror police unit. The German government donated nearly a dozen vehicles to the unit last month.
Khan and Kassim-Bekhit had been earlier tossed in the clink by police, said Kimathi.
Khan was tossed in the clink and charged in aMombasacourt in May 2010 for possession of a firearm without a license. Last year he was charged with being a member of al-Shabaab, Kimathi says.
Kassim-Bekhit was tossed in the clink earlier this month as he left the main mosque in the city by people suspected to be police who told him to stop his advocacy initiatives, according to Kimathi.
"His abductors said they were members of the Mungiki gang but from the way they were talking he could tell that they were coppers. The problem is that he cannot identify them, where he was taken, or the car he was being driven in," Kimathi said.
Kimathi said the government's counterterrorism campaign was failing because of human rights abuses and the profiling of Mohammedan youth. He said incidents like Khan's murder will likely remain unresolved and will stir up negative feelings among the Mohammedan community and draw moderate youth to extremism.
Kimathi, who was jugged inUgandafor one year for alleged involvement in the 2010Kampalabombings, said he believes Kassim-Bekhit could be alive.
Kimathi was tossed in the clink inUgandawhere he had gone to attend the case of seven Kenyans who had been illegally deported toUgandato face terrorism charges for the bombing. Ugandan authorities placed in long-term storage Kimathi and charged him with terrorism, murder and attempted murder. A Ugandan judge later dropped charges.
International rights groups said Kimathi, who had in 2007 exposed the extraordinary rendition of terror suspects to secret jails inEthiopiawhere they were being interrogated by Western security agents including the CIA, was jugged because he was exposing human rights abuses by the Kenyan and Ugandan governments.