President William Ruto said Monday that all those abducted in the wake of anti-government protests had been “returned to their families” and promised it would not happen again.
It was one of the clearest admissions by the president that security forces had engaged in widespread kidnappings and illegal detentions following massive protests last June and July.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has recorded more than 60 extrajudicial killings and at least 80 abduction cases since the June protests, with dozens still missing.
Some victims say they were held for months in undisclosed locations.
At a press conference alongside visiting Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Ruto claimed all those abducted had been set free.
“All the people who disappeared or who were abducted… all of them have been brought back to their families and to their homes and I have given clarity and firm instructions that nothing of that kind of nature will happen again,” Ruto said.
He said he vowed on taking office in 2022 to end the political kidnappings and extrajudicial killings that have plagued the country for decades.
But a report released last week by Missing Voices, a coalition of rights groups including Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists, said the number of confirmed enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings rose to 159 last year, the highest since it began counting in 2019.
Ruto said he had made the police financially independent of the presidency and that there was an “accountability mechanism” to investigate the abductions.
Missing Voices rejected that claim in its report, saying: “Despite the high number of enforced disappearances, no officer has been taken to court and charged with the crimes.”
