In 2019, The Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) George Kinoti summoned an elite group of officers to his office on new year’s eve where he made an announcement.
All police officers at the dreaded Flying Squad police unit were moved (in yet another reshuffle)and the team disbanded.
“The Directorate of Criminal Investigations wishes to inform the public that after disbanding all the Flying Squad Sub-units within the Country, only the Headquarters Unit based in Nairobi remained.
With effect from today, the Unit has equally been disbanded. This marks the end of the Flying Squad Unit and no officer will present himself or herself to the public as such.”
Equally, the Special Crime Prevention Unit (SCPU) was scaled down to a smaller unit and renamed Special Service Unit (SSU).
Officers in this new unit had undergone intense training in and outside the country leading to the upgrading of their competencies, enhanced skills, and knowledge aimed at making the Unit more effective.
The over 60 officers who have been working under the unit were asked to surrender government wares which included weapons and handcuffs and wait for further communication on where they will be posted.
Head of the unit Musa Yego was moved to the DCI headquarters while his deputy Jack Owino was moved to Embu and named the local DCIO.
Officials said only four officers remained at the unit to manage the transition.
Flying Squad officers were mainly used to carry out special duties such as raids. They also back up other officers, even in terror-related operations.
In most cases, Flying Squad officers do not appear in court to give evidence since most of their missions are like those of hit squads. They are not sent to make arrests because their missions involve the exchange of fire that often ends in the deaths of suspects.
But is this new, specially trained squad to blame for the spate of disappearances especially in the last couple of months?
Take the murder of the flamboyant Somali-American engineer-turned-tenderpreneur whose death circumstances remains unclear
One thing is certain, the killers, brutal and vicious, did not leave anything to chance.
Bashir Muhamud had been winning multi-million-shilling contracts in Kenya and was kidnapped shortly after he left Mialle 72 Lounge in Lavington, Nairobi.
One would ask, do common thugs have the wherewithal, time and resources, and muscle to kidnap a fully grown man, burn his SUV some 30 kilometers from where it was last seen, remove the vehicle’s tracker, strangle the man, cut his body and dump the same dozens of kilometers in another county.
Bashir’s murder was no different from that of Benjamin Imbai, Brian Oduro, Jack Anayango, and Elijah Obuong. The four were picked up from a restaurant in Kitengela on April 19 by unknown people and were never seen alive again.
Obuong’s and Imabi’s bodies were later found floating in a River, in Murang’a with a postmortem exam later revealed that they had been strangled.
Daily Nation claims that their investigations into the Kitengela quartet of Imbai, Odour, Ochieng, and Obuong indicate that they were not only hardcore criminals but were also being protected by some officers from the Buru Buru Police Station – and that they were living on borrowed time as several of their accomplices had been killed.
The group relocated to Nairobi in 2018 following their involvement in a spate of robberies in the coastal region.
Who wanted them out of the way, and is the killer squad the same that eliminated Bashir?
Bashir’s killers also carried out their job with so much precision that with the bungling of the investigation it will be hard to find out who was responsible.
Also missing is another flamboyant businessman Dafton Mwitiki, who disappeared in March last year. While his car was found in Juja, Kiambu, his whereabouts are unknown.
Mwitiki, who captured national attention after he showed up during the Dusit terror attack in 2019 with a high-caliber rifle, was the head of a gang that kidnapped people and demanded ransom in cahoots with rogue elements within the police force.
Another missing man is Security expert Mwende Mbijiwe.
The new killings are more calculated, definitely an upgrade in skillset from the Kwe Kwe of yester years that evoked fear among members of the Mungiki sect and other suspects of crime. There was no doubt about it; if you were on the police squad’s list, you would surely be eliminated.
The dreaded squad was implicated in the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution of civilians, human rights crusaders, and even fellow police officers.
The squad consisted of Zebedeo Maina — who was allegedly shot dead by his juniors during an operation to rescue an abducted child, Chief Inspector John Kariuki, Sergeant John Gitahi, Bernard Kiriinya, and the former head of the Flying Squad Reche Nyagah, all of whom died mysteriously, and Richard Katola, who suffered a stroke. Three others disappeared and have never been found.
Before his death in 2010, Kiriinya confessed in a videotape that he was a member of the death squad, which, he said, had strangled, shot, and hacked to death 60 people. He handed the tape to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) days before he was shot dead in Nairobi’s Westlands.
Eleven years after the killings, a leaked conversation extracted from a Telegram group points to the existence of a well-structured execution squad within the National Police Service (NPS) charged with the elimination of crime suspects.
The leaked conversation published by Nationrevealed a well-planned ambush conducted after an analysis of the suspects’ routine.
The officers in the conversation mentioned that three suspects had been killed and that two were yet to be found. The conversation pointed to a team determined to kill, not arrest.
Several police officers interviewed by the Nation on condition of anonymity said there were several ‘companies’ within the service tasked with eliminating hard-core criminals and suspects of terrorism.
“They work with informants — most of whom are also members of the gangs. Snitches are always criminals themselves. The bosses know and the instruction is usually to eliminate the hard-core criminals because when they are taken to court, they are bailed out and they come back and pose a threat to the people and the police.
“But these same police officers get entangled in the ring and then eliminate their accomplices after the deals are sealed, to short-change or silence them,” the officer revealed.
Nation claim that the current hit squads, among them Radiation Squad, the Alternating Current, or simply AC, which later came to be known as Hessy, have the blessings of the National Police Service
The legion of killer cops under the AC squad — Hessy wa Kayole, Hessy wa Dandora, Hessy wa Eastlando and other Hessys, have been using social media to warn the suspects before they are killed.
Officers operating in the death squads have also been eliminating one another over betrayal, offering a glimpse into what might have happened among the Eagle Squad members.
In the affidavit handed to the KNCHR, Kiriinya gave the names of victims, locations of killings, and instances he had witnessed.
A KNCHR report titled Cry of Blood, mainly compiled from Kiriinya’s confessions, had been released before his killing. The report indicated that the Kenya Police was complicit in extrajudicial killings between June and October 2007.
It said bodies were dumped in far-flung mortuaries, garbage sites, dams, forests, and rivers, among other places.
He said the police unit was the defunct Kwekwe Squad, and that they were paid Sh25,000 every week in allowances, and Sh150,000 each to carry out the assassinations. In killing Mungiki members, police deployed the same tactics the proscribed gang used.
According to the letter, the bodies of victims were dumped in Tsavo West National park to be eaten by hyenas, and in the Ruai Sewage treatment plant, where bodies were dumped in the dead of the night.
Kiriinya met his death a few months after giving his testimony to a Human Rights Body affiliated with the UN, in which he chilling details a myriad of extra-judicial deaths in the hands of his former squad.
A few years prior, Nairobi had fallen into the grip of an outlawed sect, Mungiki – a brainchild of Maina Njenga (Chairman), and Ndura Waruinge (Treasurer).
The police force was headed by Hussein Ali – the military man to lead an ambiguous police force.
To nip the rapidly-growing Mungiki sect in the bud, Michuki allegedly commissioned a special squad called Kwekwe Squad.
Whistleblower Kiriinya had then been attached as a driver to Special Crime Investigations Unit at CID HQs, Nairobi. Between 2002 and 2007. He had served in various departments, often as a personal driver to several senior police commissioners.
In 2007, As fate would have it, Kiriinya was attached to The Special Crimes Unit – specifically assigned to Kwekwe Squad.
Then came the execution of Virginia Nyakio, beloved wife to Mungiki sect leader, Maina Njenga and her driver, Ndungu son of Wagacha, along Lang’ata Road.
On the fateful day, the team was driving in three vehicles, Kiriinya in a Mitsubishi Gallant. They managed to block Nyakio’s car – a RAV 4 – at the roundabout of Madaraka Estate along Lang’ata Road.
They pulled them out of the RAV 4, bundled them into one of their cars, and drove towards Ngong Forest, as was their modus operandi. One of the squad members took control of Nyakio’s RAV 4 and trailed them.
Deep in Ngong Forest, a systemic, vicious, question session was put in play. Nothing in the CIA-torture handbook was spared – burning with cigarette ends, pulling out toenails with pliers. Her driver, Ndungu, had a nail drilled through his left foot.
Kiriinya, in his confession, revealed that Njenga’s wife wasn’t actually raped – something more horrendous happened. Someone on the team had fetched an empty beer bottle from the boot of a car and it was inserted into her private parts
After an afternoon in the woods, they drove their captives to Lukenya, in Machakos – in a convoy of four vehicles, including Nyakio’s silver RAV 4.
After a few miles, the team stopped. They vandalized Nyakio’s RAV 4 – pulling out the audio system, spare wheel, and side mirrors. They then set the vehicle on fire.
At this point, Kiriinya was leaning against his car, the Gallant, around 20 meters away. The captives were kneeling near the burning vehicle, and visibly smarting from the heat.
Suddenly, the whistleblower saw the team descend on the kneeling captives – they repeatedly slashed poor Nyakio on the head, till she slumped forward, face first.
The team set upon the driver with rungus, till he breathed his last – head bashed in.
The two bodies were stashed into the boot of one of the waiting government vehicles and drove back to Nairobi, the two bodies in the boot. Towards daybreak, they took Thika Road. They drove to Gatundu, a place called Gakoe – and dumped the bodies in some overgrown grass by the roadside.
Nyakio’s burial in Kitengela a fortnight later was a tense standoff between a heavily-armed GSU contingent and irate members of the public, most of them perceived to be Mungiki adherents.
This is an excerpt from the deceased’s driver, policeman Bernard Kiriinya’s signed testimony to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). He was killed while under the commission’s witness protection unit.
There's no story that cannot be told. We cover the stories that others don't want to be told, we bring you all the news you need. If you have tips, exposes or any story you need to be told bluntly and all queries write to us [email protected] also find us on Telegram
