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Inmates fear going home ‘to be lynched’
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- Published on Monday, 05 May 2008 18:19
The Sunday Nation learnt that some of the offenders are entitled to bail while others can be bonded to keep the peace and freed but none is pursuing any of these possibilities. Prisoners told the Sunday Nation that 40 ex-convicts have so far been killed by villagers and a local vigilante group known as Kisungusungu. Some of those lynched, they said, were either out on bond or had been bonded to keep peace. Others had gone back to crime.
“We fear that we shall meet the same fate when we complete our sentences,” Yusuf Bin Onyango, a remand prisoner, told Kisii Resident Judge Daniel Musinga when he toured the jail recently. Justice Musinga, who was accompanied by the Kisii Senior Principal Magistrate Charles Mbogo promised to take up the matter with the concerned authorities. “I’m very comfortable here. Even if I’m released, I will not go to face the lynch mobs. They have eliminated my family and they are now baying for my blood,” said a remandee who identified himself only as Matagaro.
The officer in charge of the prison said he was aware that several former inmates had been killed by vigilantes after their release. He appealed to the community to accept those set free back after completing their sentences.“I would not want to hear that they have been killed,” he said. “Some of them are very good people and I feel very stressed when I hear they have been lynched.”
He blamed the police for allowing the killings and stigmatisation of ex-convicts and remandees. Mr Adero has petitioned the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights on behalf of prisoners to take up the matter. “We want the killings stopped because it does not make any sense to rehabilitate them and they are killed immediately on release,” he said.
Last year, the KNCHR conducted a public inquiry into the vigilante killings but the report is yet to be made public. Mr Victor Bwire, an official at the commission, said the report will be made public soon. Since the upsurge of the killings, Mr Adero said he has been advising prisoners who have completed their sentences to report to chiefs, DOs and the police wherever they get hostile reception. “They also have an obligation to build rapport with the community, police and chiefs once they get home. They play a big role in their bid to be accepted to the community,” he said.
He warned ex-convicts against going back to crime, saying that would turn the community against them. At the height of the lynching late last year, prisoners and remandees threatened to boycott hearings at the Kisii law courts.The threat led to the then Kisii Resident Judge Lady Justice Jean Gacheche to visit the prison and assure the prisoners that their concerns were being addressed.
The prisoners also wrote a memorandum to the Kisii DC and the judge. The memo said in part: “According to information from our relatives, our lives are in danger. All ex-convicts have been killed in Kisii District. Who is behind these killings? “The judiciary has... jailed offenders for rehabilitation, why are they lynched after completing rehabilitation? If this is going on, what is the role of the penal institution?”
They demanded to know if the Kisungusungu vigilante group was part of the government security apparatus. They attached the names of 19 people whom they claimed were ex-convicts who had been lynched. “If the people of this region do not have a place for ex-convicts and remandees, then we are ready to make the prison our permanent home,” the memo further stated. Mr Adero has invited former inmates to talk to the prisoners. Among them is Mr Nyariki Chweya and Joel Nyokworo, who spent 20 years at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. Mr Chweya was a dreaded criminal but says he has since reformed.
“They have told the prisoners how long the process to be accepted by the community was and I think this will work for the prisoners,” Mr Adero said. Religion is playing a part in the rehabilitation, with some studying theology by correspondence and others being baptised by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the dominant denomination in the region.
