Families recount last moments with relatives gone without trace

On Thursday last week, Samuel Kamau left his house for work in Dandora but while there he was picked up by plain-clothed police officers.

Seven days later, Kamau is yet to be found.

Kamau's family said their search in police stations, hospitals and morgues has been futile.

“The police say they did not arrest him," Waithera Macharia, Kamau's mother, said in Kayole on Tuesday.

“We have not found him or his body. I plan to go to Ruai, just to check if he was dumped in the sewerage treatment plant.” 

Samuel is just one of the 69 people who have disappeared in the past three years, according to data by the Missing Voices coalition.

As the group led the country in marking the International Day for Victims of Enforced Disappearances on Tuesday, victims recounted the last moments with their loved ones before they went missing.

They hope to find them whether dead or alive.

Anne Njeri hopes her husband Michael Njau will come back.

Whenever she steps out, she searches frantically among strangers for the face of Njau who disappeared on April 24, 2020.

However, after two years and four months of waiting, the dream is but a mirage, slowly fading away as she deals with threats from authorities asking her to quit the search.

Njau, an activist at the Kiamaiko Social Justice Centre, went missing while heading to Thika alongside his cousin Adan Mohammed and taxi driver Samuel Mungai.

“An officer told me to stop the search because he had heard that I would disappear if I kept digging deeper. He said my husband received a disturbing call with two choices, to give up himself or his family,” Njeri said.

A week after he disappeared, police only found the taxi they were using and a jacket in Githurai 45. The car, a grey silver Toyota Ractis, is at Githurai police station.

“They could have brought us his body so we can bury and know that he is lost forever. It is better than waiting every day for him to come back, looking for his face among strangers,” she said.

“Many nights, I see him walk in through the door and tell me that he is back, but when the sun rises, I realize it was just a dream.”

The mother of three said Njau, who was not staying with them, called her the previous night to tell her he loved her, something that he had never done before.

“On the day he went missing, he spoke to me and the children and told us that he would be travelling back from Thika where had gone with his cousin the very day,” Njeri said.

“From around 4pm, I tried calling him but his phone had been switched off. At night, he was in the dinner plans but didn't show up.” 

At around 9pm, Njeri realised that no one knew Njau’s whereabouts after his other cousin called to find out if he had been seen.

The search only led the family to the Githurai police station where the car had been taken.

“It has been very hard on my children, especially my last-born daughter. She reminds me that there is a voice missing in my house,” Njeri said.

“I am forced to lie to her that her dad travelled for work very far and that he will return. She wants him to bring her a bicycle when he comes back.” 

Though his two older sons understood what happened to their father, the gap remains. They are hopeful of his return.

“The second born son's grades continue to deteriorate and though I recruit tutors to bring him back to where he used to be. He is always quiet and disturbed. I miss him so much,” Njeri said.

Missing Voices recorded 10 cases of enforced disappearances in 2019, 22 in 2020 and 36 in 2021 in a worrying upward trend.

Most of the cases were reported in Mombasa followed by Nairobi.

Houghton Irungu, Amnesty International Kenya director, said authorities often use enforced disappearances to instil fear in the community and scare them from demanding their rights.

“The purpose is not always to end the lives of the victims. It is properly orchestrated at silencing the community,”  Irungu said.

Craig Omore, a lawyer, said the country lacks a law that criminalises enforced disappearances making it very difficult to prosecute such cases.

“The closest is a habeas corpus on article 25 which demands a person in custody to be produced dead or alive. Enforced disappearance is not in law in our country,” he said.

Edited by Kiilu Damaris