Pressure piles on Ipoa to act on policemen who brutalised Nairobi MCA
The Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji has directed the Independent Policing Oversight Authority to investigate the conduct of police officers for beating up a Nairobi ward representative.
This follows the hospitalisation of Mlango Kubwa MCA Patricia Mutheu after she was beaten up and injured by police officers at City Hall on Tuesday.
About four police officers, two of them senior officials, were caught on camera kicking, dragging and clobbering Ms Mutheu on the floor inside City Hall.
The incident occured after chaos erupted when a section of Nairobi MCAs attempted to serve Speaker Beatrice Elachi a notice of an impeachment motion against her.
Speaker Elachi first took off from her office but later returned and barricaded herself inside as the MCAs also wanted to serve her a court order suspending the appointment of Edwin Gichana as the new clerk.
Anti-riot police officers who were called in to restore order cornered MCAs, teargassed and beat up some of them. They also chased away journalists from the building.
Speaking later in a hospital, the Mlango Kubwa MCA said that she was not part of the group that was being scuttled. She said police found her seated on the floor and without any provocation clobbered her with the senior officer asking his juniors to handcuff her.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Ipoa said it had commenced preliminary investigations into the police brutality report.
"The Authority has contacted some of the people who were present during chaos that unfolded at the County Assembly of Nairobi today. This preliminary enquiry seeks to establish the role played by police officers who were deployed at the premise during the fracas in which at least one case of injury to a member of the County Assembly was reported," said Ipoa Chairperson Anne Makori.
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko, who visited the MCA in hospital on Tuesday night, also called on Ipoa to expedite their investigations, saying such acts should not occur in a country governed by the rule of the law.
