ELEVEN victims of the Nyayo House Torture Chambers among them a former MP and an ex-mayor have been awarded Sh 34.4 million by the High Court for the suffering they underwent in the hands of police officers.
While awarding them, Justice Isaac Lenaola said the “state must today pay for the price of its failing in the past. The judge said it was clear the 11 victims suffered in the hands of states officers. The judge said the acts of the officers were illegal and inhuman.
And he said "the judiciary should not fall into the obvious of ignoring of the past". It was a huge relieve to the victims because unlike in the past, where the courts have awarded victims in similar cases together, the judge decided to award each one of them separately according to the torture each was inflicted and the length in which each was held in detention.
The judge ruled that each of the victims proved that they were tortured and subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment by overzealous police officers in an effort to extract confessions from them. Most of the victims were arrested between 1986 and 1991 on allegations that they were planning to overthrow the government.
They were also accused of failing to disclose the whereabouts of people who were then seen as threats to the government, they were accused of being behind publications or belonged to groups such as Mwakenya Movement, Kenya Patriotic Front or the February Eighteen Movement. Justice Lenaola blamed the office of the attorney general saying although he appeared in all cases, he made no specific answer to the allegations made by each victim.