•Okero has retrieved 26 bodies, the latest one being on Friday last week.
•He says that the homicide officer became hostile and forced him to record a statement explaining his job.
Image: Courtesy.
A local diver who has been helping with the retrieval of bodies from River Yala has gone into hiding because he said he fears for his safety.
Nicholas Okero claimed he had been arrested and intimidated by police in Yala on Wednesday. He said he was kept at the police station from 8am to 4.30pm and his phone was confiscated. He recorded a statement.
But Yala police denied he had been arrested and said he had only been requested to make a statement about his involvement in retrieval of bodies.
In a phone interview, he told the Star that he did not sleep at home last night after a police officer in Yala confided in him that the State is not happy with him and that he should be careful.
"I was called by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations officer in Yala, who told me that the Homicide boss wanted to meet me. The homicide boss was supposed to pay me Sh5,000 for the latest body that I retrieved from River Yala last Friday. It is the amount that they have been paying me.
Upon arriving at the DCI office in Yala, I was detained and my phone confiscated. I was detained from 8:00 am up to 4:30 pm. I was not even allowed to smoke cigarettes," he said.
Okero says that the homicide officer became hostile and forced him to record a statement explaining his job.
"He claimed that they suspect that I was hiding bodies in Ndanu falls in River Yala. Accordingly, they insisted that I record a statement explaining my role in the River Yala bodies mystery.
It is after one of the police officers confided in me that I needed to be careful that I decided to go into hiding. I did not sleep at home," Okero told the Star.
Okero explains that the water level in River Yala has been subsiding lately, thus exposing more bodies caged between rocks. But police are now suspecting him to be the one who has been tying the corpses between rocks.
"I was intimidated, and I am not happy," he added.
According to Okero, a meeting of about 15 people was held at the DCI offices in Yala during his detention.
Haki Africa, through a statement, said that it is through their intervention that Okero was released.
The rights organization has since vowed to hold the DCI responsible should anything happen to Okero.
"On Wednesday, Haki Africa learnt that Okero Okite was summoned by the police in Yala on the pretext of being offered a job by the State for his good work. However, on reaching the station, he was detained and threatened. His phone was also confiscated," Haki Africa said Thursday.
Okero is the only person that the relatives of missing persons and the police in Yala have been depending on to dive and retrieve decomposing bodies of unknown individuals from River Yala.
So far, Okero has retrieved 26 bodies, the latest one being on Friday last week.
Last week, Okero had complained to the Star that the police in Yala were harassing him over things he had very little understanding about.
Okero, would be seen avoiding and camouflaging from the police at the Yala Sub County Hospital Mortuary whenever they approached and seemed to be comfortable only in the presence of rights officials like Hussein Khalid of Haki Africa and Stephen Mugacho of IMLU.
"We demand that he immediately be given protection and that Kenyans speak out against this intimidation," Haki Africa's statement read.
Gem subcounty police commander Chacha Mwita told the Star over the phone that he had no information about Okero's predicament and would comment on it once he had gathered any information.
In the meantime, Chacha indicated that the police have no issue with Okero.
When he spoke to the Star last week, he had speculated that "the police are not giving me peace because I am the man behind all this mess (bodies) in Yala morgue. I am the person who revealed this mess by diving and fishing out the bodies from where they were dumped, something that is an egg on the face of the State."