Kenyan court sentences police officer to death for killing detainee
Friday February 15, 2018
Reuters/Njeri MwangiFILE PHOTO: Nahashon Mutua, a former senior Kenyan police officer, is handcuffed in the dock at his trial in Nairobi
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Other officers in the station were not investigated by the IPOA in the Koome case.
Mutua has 14 days to appeal against the conviction.
Kenya's Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), established in 2011 after police killed hundreds of Kenyans during post-election unrest in 2007, can investigate police on its own initiative or after receiving a public complaint.
"This milestone decision (on Mutua) reiterates IPOA's commitment to professionalise the National Police Service through holding to account culpable officers and exonerating those who are falsely accused," IPOA said in a statement.
Death sentences are not unusual in Kenya but they are generally commuted to life imprisonment. No executions have been carried out since 1987.
Two other policemen were sentenced to death by the High Court last November for murdering a fellow officer and two civilians in a Nairobi bar in 2014.
Separately, an inquest court in the western city of Kisumu said on Thursday that 36 police officers should be held liable for the 2017 death of a six-month old baby, and called for criminal proceedings to begin.
The baby's parents said the infant was teargassed and clubbed by police who invaded their home in Kisumu hunting for protesters after a disputed presidential election in August.
Kenyan court sentences police officer to death for killing detainee
NAIROBI (Reuters) - A Kenyan court on Thursday sentenced a former senior police officer to death for killing a detainee in his custody, one of the harshest punishments over widespread police brutality in the East African country. Activists have lo