DROWNED’ OFF YEMEN
last week. No one has been charged in the killing of Msando, who had torture marks.
Former U.S. secretary of State John Kerry, who is leading a mission of election observers here, said Kenya’s ability to secure its voting system “appears to be very, very strong.”
He spoke as Kenya’s election commission defended its electronic voting system Wednesday night, saying there were “no interferences before, during and after” Tuesday’s vote.
Given Kenya’s history of election violence, Nairobi has resembled a ghost town, with stores and offices closed. Residents stayed home or fled the capital for the countryside.
In 2007, more than 1,100 people were killed in post-election violence. Odinga, a former prime minister, lost that election, one of three defeats at the polls before this vote.
He lost the 2013 vote to Kenyatta and challenged the results on a similar claim of vote-tampering. The Supreme Court ruled against him.
Kenyatta’s Jubilee party denied any vote tampering.
“You cannot claim the results are fake,” Raphael Tuju, the party’s secretary general, told the Kenyan newspaper The Star. “We would like to appeal for calm as it has been a very tough campaign and both sides invested a lot.”
The Kenya Human Rights Commission said it was looking into discrepancies it found in the results.
Some civic groups joined Odinga in disputing the election results. George Kegoro, who heads a voter education group, said the election commission failed to release totals from polling places as required by law. “The commission is deducting votes from opposition leader Raila Odinga and adding them to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s tally,” he charged.
The U.N. agency for migration says up to 50 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia were “deliberately drowned” when a smuggler forced them into the sea off Yemen’s coast.
The International Organization for Migration statement called the incident “shocking and inhumane.”
The agency says staffers found the shallow graves of 29 of the migrants on a beach in Shabwa during a routine patrol.
The statement says the smuggler forced more than 120 migrants into the sea Wednesday morning as they approached Yemen’s coast.
The narrow waters between the Horn of Africa and Yemen have been a popular migration route despite ongoing conflict in the country.
The statement says staffers provided aid for 27 surviving migrants who remained on the beach, while other migrants left. The agency says 22 migrants are missing.