It is a macabre and mysterious discovery. Kenyan police announced on Wednesday, January 19, 2022, that they had opened an investigation after the discovery, in recent months, of decomposing bodies, some mutilated, in a river in the west of the country.
With our correspondent in Nairobi, Florence Morice
It was the Kenyan NGO Haki Africa that sounded the alarm. Its director Hussein Khalid affirms that his teams discovered at the morgue of Yala, in the west of the country, the existence of 21 bodies, anonymous, fished out of the river of the locality. Male bodies only.
Some were “ tied with ropess”, others presenting ” deep cuts ” more besides “ polythene bags over the head “, according to the NGO. A morgue attendant told them that at least ten of these bodies ” had been found in carefully closed individual bags “. The morgue also indicated that it kept unclaimed bodies for a maximum of 90 days before burying them, suggesting that the 21 bodies were therefore recovered in the last three months.
Worry and emotion
The Kenyan police dispute. She speaks of 19 bodies and affirms that it is an accumulation of corpses found over the past two years. It also announces the opening of an investigation and the dispatch of a forensic team to identify them.
The case arouses concern and emotion in Kenya, where cases of enforced disappearances are not uncommon, and sometimes blamed on the police or the security services. The NGO Haki Africa is also asking that the police in the region also be the subject of an investigation “ to determine she said, whether or not she is implicated in these murders “.