Shooting of activists in Nairobi spurs outcry

Subject: Shooting of activists in Nairobi spurs outcry Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:02 am

PARIS: The United States and a senior United Nations official have called for an independent investigation into the slaying of two prominent Kenyan human rights activists, shot and killed at close range Thursday while their car was blocked in heavy traffic in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

"The United States is gravely concerned and urges the Kenyan government to launch an immediate, comprehensive and transparent investigation into this crime," the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, said in a statement Friday. It urged the authorities to "prevent Kenya from becoming a place where human rights defenders can be murdered with impunity."

The slain men, Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu, had been driving to a meeting of human rights activists when unidentified assailants opened fire. There were no reports of arrests.

Last month, the two activists met with Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, and provided him with "testimony on the issue of police killings in Nairobi and Central Province," Alston said in a statement issued in New York on Thursday.

"It is extremely troubling when those working to defend human rights in Kenya can be assassinated in broad daylight in the middle of Nairobi," Alston said. "This constitutes a major threat to the rule of law, regardless of who might be responsible for the killings."

He said there was "an especially strong onus on the Kenya government to arrange for an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding" the killings.

Alston visited Kenya last month and said in a previous statement that killings by police had been "systematic, widespread and carefully planned."

In 2007, the organization that Kingara founded and led, the Oscar Foundation, published a report called: "Licensed to Kill: Extrajudicial Execution and Police Brutality in Kenya." Oulu was the Oscar Foundation's communications and advocacy director.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/06/africa/kenya.php

Shooting of activists in Nairobi spurs outcry

Shooting of activists in Nairobi spurs outcry

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