‘Rangers forced me to carry burning wood’

By JOE KIARIE

Leonard Kipngetich’s ordeal at the hands of state security officers in Koibatek Forest on June 20 last year is likely to haunt him for a lifetime.

At the crack of dawn, Kipngetich, then 17 and in Form One, recalls striding into the forest in Sachangwan, Nakuru County, to look for a lost sheep that he claims failed to return home the previous evening.

Hot in tow was his mother, Mrs Hellen Tergech.

“We took different routes,” he recalls. “As I walked several metres away from a spot that had smoldering remains of burnt charcoal, I was ambushed by two forest rangers who handcuffed and started beating me up. They dragged me to the site ordering me to confess that I was responsible for the charcoal burning.”

Kipng’etich denied any wrongdoing. But little did he anticipate the brutality that awaited him. “They forced me to chew an old slipper that lay on the ground. They then took me to a shallow pit nearby, forced my legs in and started stamping on me as I screamed in pain,” he says.

Worse was yet to come.

“The rangers then took a piece of burning wood and forced me to carry it on my shoulders. Fearing I would die, I obeyed,” he narrates. “Not even my screams due to the painful blistering could make them rescind the inhumanity.”

As he painfully walked to a waiting car, Kipng’etich was to meet his mother. She tried to explain what they were doing in the forest. The rangers ordered her to rush home and come back brandishing her national identification card.

Her son was bundled into a waiting car that had three other suspects and claims they were whipped all the way to Molo Police Station where they were locked up. Despite the agony of a badly scalded upper right arm, the minor was only taken to hospital late that night after a whole day in the cells. He was charged in court the following morning but was immediately acquitted.

Determined to seek justice for her son, Mrs Tergech reported the attack at Sachangwan Police Base on June 22. It was recorded under OB number OB3/22/6/2012 and she was issued with a P3 form.

But the matter took a different twist four days later.

Talk with a forester

“The area councilor Paul Teisut informed me that the District Forester wanted to talk to me,” she says. “I went with my son who was treated at the forest department’s medical centre upon recommendation from the officer.

“We later had a meeting and it was agreed that I will be paid Sh20,000 towards my son’s school fees provided the matter did not proceed to court. I received the money at Sachangwan Police Base two days later and the matter ended.”

The case has since been taken up by the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), which intends to sue on the family’s behalf. Kipng’etich now suffers hearing problem and an itchy swelling on burned area.

This is just one example of the many cases in which disciplined forces continue to mete out on crime suspects, sometimes with fatal consequences. We have established that the two offending rangers have since been transferred, with no disciplinary action taken against them.

Last Sunday, as Kenyans marked the third anniversary of the promulgation of the new Constitution, which outlaws torture, members of the military service illustrated that this remains a pipe dream.

Four street poets were arrested and allegedly stripped naked, roughed up and made to roll in mud by military personnel. Their crime: taking pictures outside the Jomo Kenyatta Mausoleum along Parliament Road.

They were to later spend the night at Parliament Police Station, where their crime was booked as ‘photography’, only to be released the next morning with no charges preferred against them.

Amingo Lekudere’s brutal experience has left lingering questions as to when the impunity that characterises uniformed forces will come to an end.

On the evening of May 9 this year, Lekudere claims, he was trying to help a dying friend, Mr Ndururu Ngawasa, who had been critically injured by Administration Police officers at Wamba Shopping Centre in Samburu County.

Writhing in pain

“He was writhing in pain, asking me to take him to hospital as he had been hit by a police officer. I immediately rushed him to Wamba Mission Hospital where he was admitted while unconscious,” he says. Lekudere says he later came to learn that Ndururu was relaxing with friends outside a shop at around 7.30pm when five officers on patrol, donning AP uniforms and hoods, arrived and started indiscriminately unleashing terror on anyone in their way.

“I learnt he was felled by one strike of a baton to the head by an unidentified officer,” he says.

Ndururu, a father of four, died 11 days later. A post-mortem examination report shows he died due to a severe head injury inflicted by a blunt object, resulting in internal bleeding.

“The incident was reported at Wamba Police Station on May 13 this year, but no effort was made to discipline the officer. It is sad that a Kenyan who is not even a criminal can die just like that,” laments Lekudere.

Apparently, not all extra-judicial killings and torture cases have involved state officers on duty. Some have been as a result of hostility by officers in private beats.

Robert Karimi, a boda boda operator, has the scars to show his ordeal in the hands of a rogue officer in Kieni West District, Nyeri County in September last year.

Karimi, 25, says he had just dropped a passenger at Bagamoyo Shopping Centre when a forest ranger approached him and requested to be ferried to their patrol base at Karandi.

“It was at around 10pm so I automatically declined to offer the service,” he says. “The officer was notorious for not paying for transport services and had a poor disciplinary record.”

What followed was beyond Karimi’s imagination.

“The officer got hold of me, drew a pocketknife and started stabbing me on the face while hurling profanities,” he explains. “I tried to flee as he struggled to pluck out a piece of wood from a fence but he felled me with a blow and continued stabbing me. He took my wallet and left me for dead.” Upon regaining consciousness, and bleeding profusely, Karimi says he immediately reported the incident at Nairutia Police Station enroute to Kariminu dispensary where he had a total of 32 stitches done on various parts of his badly disfigured head.

“Early the next morning, I was summoned by the OCS to record a detailed statement and realised the ranger had already been arrested,” he states. “But he was released immediately I left, with no reason provided.”

Justice denied

Furious that justice was being subverted, local residents mobilised and apprehended the officer at Kiahama Forest, only for fellow rangers to intervene and allegedly fire two shots in the air to save their colleague who was being frog marched to the same police station from where he had earlier been released.

“He was finally brought to the station but the rangers still managed to rescue him,” claims Karimi, who laments that the officer was later transferred with no further action taken against him.

“At some point he approached me with a cash offer so that I could drop the case but I declined and reported the matter to IMLU that is now following it up with the intention of opening legal proceedings,” he claims.

Like Karimi, Mrs Tergech insists indisciplined officers should not be let off the hook. “Transferring such officers won’t help. What would keep them from killing if they get away with atrocities like this?” she poses.