Kenya's internationally funded anti-terrorism police have carried
out a series of killings and "enforced disappearances" following a
string of attacks in the country, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.
"Kenyan
counter-terrorism forces appear to be killing and disappearing people
right under the noses of top government officials, major embassies, and
the United Nations", said HRW's deputy Africa director Leslie Lefkow.
"This horrendous conduct does not protect Kenyans from terrorism, it simply undermines the rule of law."
The unit receives funding from the United States and Britain, HRW added, with Washington providing $19m in 2012.
HRW
said it had documented evidence of "at least 10 cases of killings, 10
cases of enforced disappearances, and 11 cases of mistreatment or
harassment of terrorism suspects," with strong evidence of a police
involvement.
"Suspects were shot dead in public places, abducted
from vehicles and courtrooms, beaten badly during arrest, detained in
isolated blocks, and denied contact with their families or access to
lawyers", HRW said in its report.
"Donors need to carry out their
own investigations of these abuses and suspend their assistance to
abusive forces, or risk being complicit in Kenya's culture of impunity",
HRW added.
Several Muslim clerics have been shot dead on the
coast, including radical leaders accused of backing Somalia's al-Qaeda
linked al-Shabaab insurgents.
Kenya's anti-terrorism police unit
(ATPU) was set up in 2003 following a bomb attack on the US embassy in
Nairobi in 1998, and on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa in 2002.
"The
ATPU has been conducting abusive operations for years, sometimes very
openly, yet the Kenyan authorities have done nothing to investigate,
much less stop these crimes", HRW added.
Kenya has been hit by a
series of attacks since invading Somalia in 2011 to battle the
al-Shabaab, later joining an African Union force battling the Islamists.
The
al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for last September's assault on
Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in which at least 67 people were
killed.
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