Chief of Kenya’s police has been sentenced to six months in jail for contempt

Kenya’s interim police commander received a six-month prison sentence on Friday for persistently refusing to comply with instructions to provide testimony on the location of three individuals who were reportedly kidnapped by police officers.

The High Court judge in Nairobi has temporarily halted the sentence for a period of seven days, allowing Gilbert Masengeli, the interim inspector general of police, a last opportunity to appear in court before being dispatched to prison.

The action is initiated by the primary legal organization in the country, the Law Society of Kenya. The Society is requesting a court order to release three individuals who were allegedly detained by the police in August and have not been seen or heard from since then.

On social media channels, the trio expressed their support for large-scale anti-government demonstrations in June and July. According to human rights groups, some individuals participating in the demonstrations were kidnapped by state operatives and kept incommunicado thereafter. The majority were thereafter publicly disclosed.

President William Ruto has pledged to investigate these allegations, however he has generally vindicated the actions of state security services during the demonstrations.

Judge Lawrence Mugambi had requested Masengeli’s presence in court on seven occasions to disclose the location of the three individuals, but, Masengeli failed to deliver the requested information.

“If Gilbert Masengeli refuses to surrender himself to the Commissioner General of prisons, the minister of interior is obligated to take all legally required and permissible measures to secure his imprisonment,” Mugambi stated in his court decision.

A request for comment was not promptly responded to by police spokeswoman Resila Onyango.

In a presentation on Thursday, Masengeli’s attorneys requested the judge to halt his contempt verdict and stated that efforts to find the three individuals were still in progress.