A total of eight bodies, all female, have been recovered so far from a garbage dump near Nairobi, Kenya’s acting police chief said yesterday, after authorities a day earlier confirmed they had found more bags filled with dismembered female body parts, the latest macabre discovery that has horrified and angered the country.
Detectives have been scouring the site in the Mukuru area of Nairobi since the mutilated corpses of at least six women were found on Friday in sacks floating in a sea of garbage.
On Saturday, the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said that five bags had been retrieved from the abandoned quarry, three of them containing female body parts, including severed legs and two torsos, and yesterday Kenyan Acting Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja said that those were the remains of two women.
Photo: AFP
“They were severely dismembered in different states of decomposition and left in sacks,” Kanja said, adding that investigations into the gruesome find are ongoing.
Kanja called for public cooperation in the investigation, while the DCI said that its probe would “be thorough and shall cover a wide range of areas, including, but not limited to, the possible activities of cultists and serial killings.”
Kenya was left reeling last year by the discovery of mass graves in a forest near the Indian Ocean coast containing the bodies of hundreds of followers of a doomsday sect, one of the world’s worst cult-related massacres.
The country’s law enforcement services are also under scrutiny after dozens of people were killed during anti-government demonstrations last month, with rights groups accusing officers of using excessive force and of abducting protesters.
Kanja took up his post late last week after the resignation of Japhet Koome in the wake of the protests.
While the investigation proceeds, “we appeal to the members of the public to remain calm and give our detectives a chance to deliver justice to the victims of this horrendous scene,” the DCI said.
Tensions have been running high at the Mukuru site, with local media reporting that police had fired into the air to try to disperse an angry crowd.
A team of detectives and forensic experts “were impeded by agitated members of the public from accessing the scene,” the DCI said.
The Independent Police Oversight Authority on Friday said that it was investigating whether there was any police involvement in the gruesome saga.
“The bodies, wrapped in bags and secured by nylon ropes, had visible marks of torture and mutilation,” it said, adding that the dump site was less than 100m from a police station.
The watchdog also said it was looking into claims of abductions of demonstrators who went missing after the widespread anti-government protests degenerated into deadly mayhem.
However, it did not make any link to those missing and the dumped bodies.
Some people on social media have described them as victims of femicide.
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