Kenyan police raid offices of pro-democracy organisation

NAIROBI: Kenyan police and tax authorities yesterday raided the office of a pro-democracy organisation that has raised questions over preparations for last week’s disputed elections.

“They are outside the gates right now,” Gladwell Otieno, the executive director of Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG), told Reuters by phone.

Incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta won the Aug 8 election by a margin of 1.4 million votes.

International and domestic observers say the election process was largely free and fair but opposition leader Raila Odinga has disputed the results.

Kenyan television showed pictures of the raid during which civil society leaders challenged the search warrant.

Human rights lawyer Maina Kiai asked why tax authorities had to bring three vanloads of police.

“They say they have got a search warrant (but) the search warrant does not name AfriCOG. The order does not specify what they are coming to do,” he said on television.

The raid follows letters from the government accusing AfriCOG and another civil society organisation, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), of administrative and tax violations.

The threats to shut the organisations, which played a leading role in organising civil society to question and monitor the elections, provoked condemnation from the United Nations and international rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. — Reuters