By CYRUS KINYUNGU
The Prisons department may have dominated the press this year, but its prospects of wriggling out of the latest labyrinth looks increasingly dicey.
The new Commissioner may have no shortage of familiar problems – from corruption to highly reduced budgetary allocations from the Government. But none has the potential to topple the archaic and spasmodic department he heads than impunity.
The events of last week where a prisoner was killed as warders tortured inmates may not be forgotten any time soon.
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His bad day came when on the morning of November 11, warders received instructions to conduct a search on the G block to rid it of contrabands. The operation began at 11 am.
exceptional search
This was nothing unique since in a period of five months since Joseph Mutevesi reported to Kamiti as the officer in charge, three serious searches had been conducted. But this one was to turn out to be exceptional.
Ngacha stayed in cell number six but when the search ended, he found himself in cell 26, and on his deathbed.
He was ejected from his cell, clobbered by about four warders who then held him by his neck and dragged him on a concrete floor for about 40 metres before he was taken to cell 26.
Sources at Kamiti said Ngacha had loudly protested to the warders as he was ushered back to his cell after the initial search.
"He protested asking why they were burning prisoners clothes yet they had confiscated the contrabands," said the source.
The warders came back and warned Ngacha that they would kill him should he continue protesting.
The source narrated how warders would pour urine and human waste on the inmates as they stripped them naked searching for contrabands.
"They took the buckets we use as toilets, poured the human waste on us as they beat us demanding for the contrabands," said an inmate who called CCI.
"The warders would then rush to the kitchen with the buckets fetch hot water and come back running to pour it on prisoners," he added.
He said the prisoners, some of them who were naked, were forced to cover themselves from the splashing hot water with blankets.
"They dragged most prisoners out of the G block for the search. That is where they stripped them naked and tortured them," he explained. All this time senior warders who led the operations watched.
opportunity for change
The lights may have gone out for him, but the outrage and anger following the screening on national and international TV of the senseless brutality visited upon inmates at Kamiti Prison, and which has brought forth a nightmare for the entire Home Affairs Ministry may just be the catharsis needed for a total and comprehensive reform of the penal system.
A warder searches for contraband at Naivasha Prison. [PHOTO: ANTHONY GITONGA] |
" The annoying thing about the Vice President who is the Minister in charge of prisons, is that he doesn’t seem to treat affairs under his docket with the seriousness they deserve," a warder said.
According to a source at Kamiti, the sequence of events leading to the death, burns and beatings is much easier to follow than most other scams.
It allegedly started with the return to Kamiti of Mutevesi as the officer in charge after the warders’ strike, which claimed the scalp of the immediate former boss.
He is believed to be a no nonsense officer who is alleged to have refused a bribe of Sh120,000 to let a cartel continue operating behind bars in consort with some warders. A prisoner told CCI that he assumed his office with gusto, focussed on dismantling the tentacles of the Kamiti mafia.
First to go were the kiosks, which he had identified as conduits for smuggling contrabands. Then he banned the rearing of domestic animals within the compound, an idea borrowed from the Madoka report, which set him up against his juniors.
The warders grudgingly let go of their poultry, cows and pigs, which they used to supplement their income. Warders were also prohibited from carrying their cell phones to work. It was only a matter of time before they launched a counter-attack when disenchantment reached fever pitch. The code phrase by warders was "Tunamalizwa" (We are being finished).
The straw that broke the camel’s back came in the form of thorough body searches of all warders entering the prison, even on the fateful day.
Interestingly, junior officers were subjecting their seniors to the untold embarrassment by meticulously searching them.
"Thus when an order mobilising warders to head for a search in G-Block (since christened Guantanamo Bay) was given, it was no longer a matter of "if" but "when and how" they would pull a fast one on their boss for his perceived high-handedness," said our source.
officer injured
So enraged were the warders, our source reveals, that the entire chain of command during the search was ignored as a matter of course. Noteworthy is that the search was personally led by very senior officers at Kamiti.
One of the officers is still nursing injuries sustained as he tried to restrain the warders from harming the inmates.
That warders would go and fetch boiling water from the kitchen and pour it on the hapless naked inmates is a stark reminder of the level of impunity behind bars.
So brazen were these warders that when a human rights officer came, they dismissed him as too nosy.
prison’s paparazzi
Unbeknown to them, that security lapse afforded the inmate paparazzi a chance to hand over the now celebrated video evidence that they didn’t know existed.
But questions are being asked as to whether mobile phones are illegal because the Prisons Act (CAP 90) has never been amended since independence, yet at its enactment, mobile phones had not been invented.
Our source confirms that there was once a thriving phone fraud syndicate run by inmates in cahoots with a few bent warders, but that has been largely brought under control.
Whereas inmates now run consultancies on fraud syndication, their main associates are in the free world, the source said.
Prisoners are asking the Government to avail controlled telephone access via booths.
The phone fraud syndicate, the source disclosed, is so complex that it touches on the nerve of the Law enforcement; Judiciary and some mobile phone providers’ employees.
The Commissioner of Prisons has his work cut out for him, says an inmate, but he can only change that by bringing to a halt the culture of impunity.
