Kenya security officials plead not guilty to triple murder

21/2/2025 6:26

More than a dozen Kenyan

security officials pleaded not guilty on Thursday to the 2022

murders of two Indians and a Kenyan, a high-profile case that

was among several incidents that triggered the disbandment of a

notorious police unit.



The 13 police officers, a National Intelligence Service

(NIS) officer and a Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) warden were

charged with killing Indian nationals Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan and

Mohammed Zaid Sami Kidwai, and a Kenyan national, Nicodemus

Mwania Mwange, the prosecutor's office wrote on X.



"On the night of 22nd July and 23rd July 2022, near Ole

Sereni Hotel along Mombasa Road within Nairobi county... the

accused abducted and killed the three aforementioned persons,"

the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) said.



The defendants' lawyer Dunstan Omari told Reuters that all

of them pleaded not guilty.



Khan and Kidwai were in Kenya as part of President William

Ruto's digital election campaign team in the run-up to the

August 2022 presidential vote, and were using Mwange as their

driver, local media reported.



The police officers were all serving in the Special Service

Unit at the time, the prosecutor's office said. Ruto disbanded

the SSU in September 2022 following his election win, accusing

it of extrajudicial killings.



Amnesty International's Kenya chapter have linked the SSU to

most of more than 500 extrajudicial killings and dozens of

enforced disappearances between 2019 and September 2022.



Since then, activists and rights groups say that unexplained

abductions and illegal detentions by police have continued,

including the alleged kidnapping of a son of a cabinet minister.