More than a dozen Kenyan security officials pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges related to the 2022 killings of two Indian nationals and a Kenyan, a case that contributed to the disbandment of a controversial police unit.
The accused include 13 police officers, a National Intelligence Service (NIS) officer, and a Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) warden. They were charged with the murders of Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan, Mohammed Zaid Sami Kidwai, and Nicodemus Mwania Mwange, according to a statement from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) on X.
The ODPP revealed that the victims were abducted and killed between the night of July 22 and July 23, 2022, near Ole Sereni Hotel along Mombasa Road in Nairobi.
Defense lawyer Dunstan Omari confirmed that all the accused pleaded not guilty.
Khan and Kidwai, both Indian nationals, were reportedly in Kenya as part of President William Ruto’s digital election campaign team ahead of the August 2022 presidential election. They were using Mwange as their driver.
At the time of the crime, the police officers charged were serving in the Special Service Unit (SSU), a police squad disbanded by President Ruto in September 2022. Ruto accused the SSU of engaging in extrajudicial killings.
According to Amnesty International Kenya, the SSU was linked to over 500 extrajudicial killings and numerous enforced disappearances between 2019 and September 2022.
Despite the SSU’s disbandment, rights groups and activists claim that cases of unexplained abductions and illegal detentions by police have persisted, including the alleged kidnapping of a cabinet minister’s son.
