Controversial police officer Ahmed Rashid, who has for years run one of the most feared police squads in Nairobi accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings in the slums, is finally set to have his day in court and charged with murder.
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) chairperson Anne Makori on Thursday said that the officer based in Police station will be charged with the murder of Jamal Mohamed and Mohamed Dhair Kheri.
The two were unarmed when they were fatally shot on March 31, 2017, on suspicion of engaging in crime within the Eastleigh neighbourhood. In the last five years however, investigations into their killing had stalled even though it was widely known that they had been killed by officers based at the Pangani Police Station.
“The Independent Policing Oversight Authority concluded the investigation into the deaths of Mr. Jamal Mohamed and Mr. Mohamed Dahir Kheri following a shooting which occurred at Eastleigh, Nairobi County and established that the fatalities were occasioned by police action,” said Ms Makori.
“Guided by Section 29 (a) of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority Act, the findings were forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions with the recommendation to charge the Corporal Ahmed Rashid, with murder,” said the IPOA chair.
At the height of his power, Rashid who was the head of the ‘Pangani Six’ an informal group of police officers who patrolled the larger Eastleigh area and the Mathare slums, the corporal who had for year been deemed untouchable enforced martial law which was both celebrated and frowned upon.
His shot to fame came in 2017 when he was captured shooting dead a young man who had surrendered and was lying down begging for his life outside a mall in broad daylight within Eastleigh.
When questioned later by BBC journalists who came to Nairobi to cover him, he openly admitted to killing suspects saying, “Those we profile, we have to get them alive or dead.”
Those who liked him said he had brought sanity in an area that had for years been under the control of gangs. Human rights groups however accused him and the Pangani Six of carrying out extra judicial killings.
Yet despite the complains lack of political goodwill by the former government left him to roam the streets and kill suspects at will.
