Flying Squad was feared, revered in equal measure

As much as Flying Squad officers have been applauded for eliminating bank robberies and carjacking around the country, the unit has been accused of extrajudicial killings, torture and other brutal methods of extracting confessions as well as involvement in crime.

Seemingly unsupervised and a law unto themselves, Flying Squad detectives were also variously accused of extorting hefty bribes from those they arrested on trumped-up charges.

Cases abound of suspects being tortured to own up to alleged crimes and even implicate innocent people.

SHOT DEAD

In 2010, a former Flying Squad driver and officer-turned-whistle-blower Bernard Kirinya was shot dead in Nairobi’s Westlands shortly after withdrawing money from a Barclays Bank ATM.

Mr Kirinya, an informer who had been taken to safe houses in Tanzania and Uganda after he presented himself to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), swore an affidavit and wrote a confession on the many extrajudicial killings he had witnessed committed by his police colleagues.

He gave the names of victims, places of killings and instances he had witnessed. Shortly after this he returned to Kenya.

On the fateful day, he had just walked to the ATM when gunmen, believed to be his former colleagues, out of fear of the earth-shaking and revealing dossier on their heinous activities, shot him dead at point-blank range.

A KNCHR report titled ‘Cry of Blood’, mainly compiled from Mr Kirinya’s confessions, had been released a few weeks before his killing.

That he was killed because of the confession showed the extent to which the rogue elite unit could go to keep its actions secret.

MYSTERIOUS DEATHS

But life has not been a bed of roses for the Flying Squad detectives themselves.

Many have died mysteriously, been killed by colleagues and criminals or sacked after assignments.

The KNCHR report lists several cases of alleged extrajudicial killings by Flying Squad officers in their line of duty around the country.

The report indicated that Kenya Police was complicit in extrajudicial killings between June and October 2007 and bodies dumped in far-flung mortuaries, garbage sites, dams, forests and rivers, among other places. Earlier reports of extrajudicial killings by the dreaded team had been made by families of suspected Mungiki adherents, some of who had been arrested and their mutilated bodies recovered in Kinale forest on the Naivasha-Nakuru highway.

Bodies of other victims bearing torture marks were recovered in Suswa, Athi River, Magadi, Ngong, Kiserian, Kangundo, Machakos, Karura, Kieni forest and Nanyuki.

MUNGIKI

KNCHR maintained the extrajudicial killings were a systematic strategy to deal with the outlawed Mungiki adherents as opposed to arresting and arraigning them in court.

While the report revealed that the killings were as a result of frustration triggered by extreme instances of stress and impunity within the unit, another school of thought believes that the illegal acts were purely calculated to conceal evidence.

Another member of the dreaded unit, Zebedio Maina, was “mistakenly” shot dead by a junior officer, Constable Justus Wendot, during an operation to rescue a kidnapped five-year-old girl in Kitui County.

Maina, the head of the dreaded Kwekwe squad, a unit of the Flying Squad tasked with dealing with the Mungiki menace, was linked to many killings of the outlawed group’s members.

KNCHR in its damning report said evidence it gathered showed patterns of a modus operandi by the Flying Squad consistent with human rights violations.

The report revealed most of the victims of police extrajudicial killings were either shot dead, strangled, bludgeoned to death, drowned or their bodies mutilated using sharp objects.

DEMANDED FOR BRIBES

Relatives of some victims claimed that some of the police officers demanded bribes in order to release those arrested and threatened to kill them if the money was not paid.

Most of those arrested by the Flying Squad officers were either accused of robbery, being members of Mungiki or carjacking and even after repeatedly paying bribes to gain freedom, they would eventually be executed.

Flying Squad officers were linked to the abduction and killing of Kimani Ruo, who was linked to Mungiki.

Ruo was arrested outside the Nairobi Law Courts in June 2007, shortly after he was acquitted of charges of being a member of Mungiki.

WITHOUT TRACE

He was never seen again after the abduction and is believed to have been executed in cold blood.

On May 19, 2007, the body of Benson Mwangi Waraga, 55, was traced to the City Mortuary, two days after police raided his Githaku House workplace off Nairobi’s River Road and arrested him alongside 17 other people following a shootout between police and suspected robbers in which two suspects and a policeman lost their lives.

While the 17 were caught on camera being bundled into a police vehicle and driven to Kamukunji Police Station, others were released, Mwangi’s badly mutilated body to be discovered at the city mortuary two days later.

He and others arrested on the fateful day were never booked at the Kamukunji police station where they had been initially held.

Records at the mortuary revealed the body had been brought by officers based at the Parklands police station who said he had been shot dead at City Park while trying to escape.

The same fate befell Festus Gikonyo, who was arrested in the same operation in River Road on the same day. His body was discovered by relatives five days after his arrest by Flying Squad officers.

TRIGGER-HAPPY

Those who lived to tell of their encounters with the Flying Squad detectives paint a picture of rogue trigger-happy police officers who acted with impunity and killed at will even after obtaining huge amounts of money from their victims.

The officers seemed to have been operating without fear of being punished for their many misdeeds.

At one time, the team was disbanded following allegations of involvement in violent crime, sharing proceeds of crime with suspected criminals they ‘protected’ and hoarding stolen motor vehicles for personal benefit.

An Eastleigh businessman who once fell victim to the rogue officers narrated how he was arrested shortly after purchasing a Toyota Fielder.

The businessman said that he paid for the vehicle about 5pm and drove it to his residence.

The following morning, while at a car wash, he was confronted by Flying Squad officers who claimed he was under arrest for being in possession of a stolen vehicle.

Attempts by the businessman to lead the detectives to whoever sold the vehicle to him fell on deaf ears.

He was escorted to Buru Buru police station and booked into the cells but was later asked to part with Sh400,000 to gain his freedom.

VEHICLE DISAPPEARS

Unable to get the money, the businessman requested for more time, which he was accorded but the vehicle was detained at the station although not entered in the records of detained vehicles.

The ‘detectives’ who asked him not to report the matter to their Milimani road headquarters then offered to assist him obtain different registration plates for the vehicle, an offer he declined.

When he finally reported the matter to the head of Flying Squad, Mr Musa Yego, the man who sold him the vehicle volunteered to pay back the purchase price but the vehicle which had been detained at Buru Buru police station had mysteriously disappeared.

Earlier in 2019, a Flying Squad detective was arrested and arraigned in court after he ‘sold’ a vehicle he had ‘impounded’ from a Mombasa-based businessman.