NAIROBI, Kenya — Activists Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu spent years demanding justice for thousands who they said disappeared at the hands of shadowy government death squads.
Thursday night, the two men were shot dead on their way to meet with a senior member of Kenya’s top human-rights group. Their car was raked with automatic gunfire on a leafy suburban street in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers, a minute’s walk from the heavily guarded presidential residence. Their attackers escaped.
Friday, rights groups charged that the shooting was retaliation for a probe of police death squads blamed by human-rights groups and the U.N. for the execution of hundreds of young Kenyans whose mutilated bodies were dumped in rivers and lakes and at morgues.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga expressed sympathy for the two activists.
“It is worrying, and I fear that we are flirting with lawlessness in the name of keeping law and order. In the process, we are hurtling toward failure as a state,” his office said. It called for an independent investigation into the killings and distanced the prime minister from critical comments by a government spokesman about the dead activists’ organization.
Police commissioner Hussein Ali said the police were investigating all possibilities regarding the killings of the activists. He has repeatedly dismissed charges of police links to hit squads.
The killings sparked two days of clashes between students and police in which one student was shot dead. Three policemen were arrested over that death.
Former Kenyan dictator Daniel arap Moi used the security services to kill and torture critics for decades. Citizens had hoped the terror would end after the country’s first democratic election, in 2002.
But rights groups say the police service was not reformed and many of the officers responsible for abuses remained in charge.
