Alleged ‘killer’ cop Ahmed Rashid to take plea soon, IPOA says
Infamous police officer Ahmed Rashid, accused of committing multiple extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, will take plea soon, according to an Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) Commissioner.
“We have the assurances that Rashid is going to take a plea,” Commissioner John Waiganjo said in a televised interview on NTV.
“The reason why he wasn’t taking a plea is simply because there was no political goodwill. We had an Inspector General who was impervious. We had a DCI who wanted perhaps to use him for other purposes,” he added, noting that IPOA was hoping the current administration’s stance on police crimes would last to ensure accountability.
Rashid and his ill-famed Pangani Six police unit have been blamed for multiple extrajudicial killings in Eastleigh, Pangani, Mathare, Dandora and neighbouring informal settlement areas.
He was once caught on camera shooting two unarmed youth in the full glare of the public.
He has in the past said openly the group’s goal was to rid their operation area of all criminals, dead or alive.
“We must be having some goals to achieve, and as yet we have not reached that goal. Ours is to get all gangsters who are within…any crime not to happen within our area. For those we have profiled, we have to get them, whether alive or dead. That one doesn’t have any compromise about it,” he said in an explosive documentary published by BBC in September 2018.
But affected families have time and again condemned the brutality meted by Pangani Six on their kins, some whom they never got to see again after their disappearances.
Cases have been filed in court, but Rashid and his team have never taken plea or been held accountable for their acts of crime.
Waiganjo’s pledge provided a ray of hope for the multiple families who feel aggravated but have for years resigned to the fact that they may never find justice.
Missing Voices takes not of the IPOA Commissioner’s promise, and hopes it can be actualized sooner rather than later.
Rashid taking plea in a court of law will signify the start of a long-awaited judicial process from which many people will hope to find closure and peace.
Together with other human rights defender organizations, we pledge to stay close to this case and ensure IPOA delivers on this promise, and that justice can be served.
