The baby-killer case, police brutality and Kenyan’s long wait for justice

Seven years after their daughter was murdered during a brutal midnight crackdown by police in Kenya at a time of post-election tension, Joseph Olu Abanja and Lensa Achieng are still filled with emotions as the case against the alleged officers involved is reopened. Has been delayed. ,

“It’s a scar that will never fade,” Ms Achieng, who works at the hotel, tells the BBC of the death of six-month-old Samantha Pendo.

After every postponement or small development, the couple is flooded with calls. Every moment of hope in the search for justice leads to despair.

The family lives in the western city of Kisumu – an opposition stronghold where riots broke out in August 2017 amid anger over the results of an election that was eventually re-held due to irregularities.

Their small house was along a road in the Nyalenda informal settlement where protests took place on August 11, where anti-riot police were deployed.

That night the couple closed their wooden door and covered it with furniture. At around midnight, they heard that their neighbours’ doors were being broken and some of the occupants were being beaten.

It wasn’t long before police officers arrived at their door.

“They knocked and kicked it several times (but) I refused to open it,” Mr Abanza told the BBC. He further said that he pleaded with them to spare his family of four.

But the beating continued until officers found a small opening through which they fired a tear-gas canister into the one-room house, forcing the family out.

Mr Abanza says he was ordered to lie down outside the door and then the beating began.

“They were going for my head so I lifted my hands up, and they beat my hands until they couldn’t take it anymore.”

His wife came out of the house holding Samantha, who was having trouble breathing due to the tear gas, and she too was not spared.

“They kept beating me (with batons) while I was holding my daughter,” Ms Achieng says.

The next thing she felt was that her daughter was holding her tightly “as if she was in pain”.

“I turned him around and what was coming out of his mouth? It was foam.”

She screamed that they had killed her daughter and at that moment the beating stopped and Mr Abanza was ordered to give first aid.

The child came but was badly injured.

The couple say officers moved quickly and neighbors helped them get Samantha to the hospital. He died after three days in intensive care.

His search for justice has been long and frustrating, like that of dozens of others caught up in the post-poll violence.

Twelve police officers are expected to be charged with murder, rape and torture – but the hearing at which this will happen, when they will be asked to enter a plea, has not yet taken place.

Willies Otieno, one of the lawyers for the victims, believes the delay is due to the lack of political will to deliver justice to the victims of election violence.

Uhuru Kenyatta later won re-election in 2017 – the opposition candidate withdrew from the contest. His deputy William Ruto, with whom he later had a falling out, emerged victorious in the next vote-taking in September 2022.

“The state is no longer interested in prosecuting criminals, (and) it is now left to victims’ lawyers – those of us who work with NGOs and human rights groups to file charges and prosecute the accused. But individuals who can be put to pressure will be prosecuted,” Mr Otieno told the BBC.

He accused the current Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of “acting like a lawyer for the accused”.

“Even the accused persons have not applied to the court for an adjournment – ​​it is the DPP who has approached the court to adjourn the petition,” the lawyer said of two failed attempts to get the petition taken up last October and November. Have applied.”

The third attempt was scheduled to take place two days earlier but was postponed due to the transfer of the presiding judge – and has been rescheduled for the end of the month.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) told the BBC it could not handle a request for comment, but posted on Twitter that “This case remains one of the most high-profile in recent history, involving Baby Pendo. The death symbolizes the tragic consequences of police brutality during the post-election unrest in 2017”.

But people involved in the case find the delay troubling.

“It was the DPP’s office that initiated this case, and they were the ones who reached out to us several years ago. They asked us to join a victim support group that was essentially set up to make sure “They were told that they would have witnesses for their case,” Irungu Houghton, head of rights group Amnesty International Kenya, tells the BBC.

Following the initial investigation, the DPP at the time, Nurding Haji, launched a public inquiry into the death of Baby Samantha. The judge found the police guilty.

Subsequently, the Public Prosecutor ordered further investigation into other cases resulting from the August 2017 police operation, and involved independent constitutional investigative bodies, civil society, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The DPP said the investigation uncovered evidence that “points to the systematic use of violence against civilians, including killing, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, all of which constitute serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity”.

In October 2022, the prosecutor sought to charge the suspects under the International Crimes Act for the first time in Kenya’s history.

Those to be charged include commanders deemed liable because of their responsibilities as senior officers – a first for Kenya.

A new DDP, Renson M Ingonga, took over in September 2023, but there has been little movement on the matter since then.

“There seems to be a reluctance to try to prosecute this case,” Mr Houghton says.

Mr Otieno says if delays continue, victims’ lawyers may consider seeking justice through private prosecution or going to the East African Court or the International Criminal Court.

Samantha’s parents support this idea because without justice they say they cannot heal – each adjudication reopens their wounds.

“It doesn’t matter how I do it, but I will make sure I get justice,” says Mr Abanza, now 40 and making a living as a tuk-tuk taxi driver.

“Because they took away from me the thing that was so precious – she was everything to me, the little girl I named after my mother.”