A former Kenyan police officer was sentenced to death on Friday for the murder of a human rights lawyer, his client and a taxi driver.
Frederick Leliman and three others were convicted of carrying out the killings in 2016, in one of a series of cases of alleged police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Kenya.
Attorney Willie Kimani represented a motorcycle taxi driver who was suing Leliman for shooting him at a traffic stop. Later, Leliman began threatening and intimidating the man.
The bodies of Kimani, his client Josephat Mwendwa and taxi driver Joseph Muiruri were discovered in the Ol-Donyo Sabuk river in the east of the country days after they were reported missing.
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Kenyan police officers in the dock, from left to right, sentenced Peter Ngugi Kamau, 20, Sylvia Wanjiku Wanjohi, 24, Stephen Cheburet Morogo, 30, and Fredrick Leliman to life in Kenya’s Milimani court on February 3, 2023.
(AP Photo)
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Evidence presented in court showed that the three were abducted after a court session on June 22, 2016, briefly locked up, then taken out and murdered in an open field. Their bodies were discovered on July 1.
Leliman was sentenced to death, while former officers Stephen Cheburet and Sylvia Wanjiku received sentences of 30 and 24 years, respectively, and police informant Peter Ngugi was jailed for 20 years. A fourth former police officer, Leonard Mwangi, was acquitted.
Those sentenced to death in Kenyan courts are serving life in prison. The last execution in Kenya was in 1987.
The four have 14 days to file an appeal.
The killings sparked a series of protests by lawyers and human rights defenders because Kenyan police have been accused of brutality and extrajudicial killings in the past, but very few officers have been convicted.
