NAIROBI, October 30 – Police Commissioner Major General Mohammed Hussein Ali has prepared a detailed confidential report to counter the Justice Philip Waki findings and recommendations which largely indict the police.
The document was prepared by a team of lawyers led by Evans Monari who represented the police during the commission’s hearings where Ali tendered what he terms as ‘sufficient evidence’ to show his successes in handling the post election violence.
Mr Monari told Capital News that the document would be handed over to high-ranking government authorities for consideration.
“We hope that it will get to serious hands in government so that it is handled side by side with the Waki report. It is not a protest note. It is a legal document because (Justice) Waki is a lawyer like myself but we have shown that the findings he came up with were not based on any reasonable evidence that was tendered before him,” he said.
Mr Monari who spoke about the controversial report for the first time said he was surprised that the commission had chosen to ignore all the evidence given by his client.
He wondered why the commission chose to dwell much on the police ‘yet it was not mandated to investigate the police’.
“This commission was formed to investigate the root cause of violence, you will be surprised that this did not come out in their findings and recommendations. Instead, they chose to vilify the police without any reasonable evidence,” he said.
Therefore, he said, the Waki commission did not meet its core mandate.
“They (commissioners) have not told us what caused violence. The report has dwelt much on the police yet it was not a commission to investigate the police,’ he added.
Asked if he was satisfied he did a good job in representing the police, Monari said; “I believe I did my best, as a matter of fact, this is one of my best cases from the evidence I tendered.”
Since the release of the Waki report, Monari has spent a lot of time scrutinizing it and concludes that it is ‘baseless and lacks facts’.
“I can tell you that this report is replete with extreme bias, it is based on their own reliance on uncorroborated evidence and other allegations are just mere conjecture,” he said.
The report, he adds, treats in a casual manner evidence given by police and efforts by police to restore security during post election violence.
“It demonstrates a desire to arrive at pre-conceived conclusions to make police scapegoats in regards to post election violence.”
The lawyer pointed out that the word police is mentioned 1361 times, an average of 2.5 times in each page, ‘politician’ is mentioned only 92 times while the phrase ‘cause of violence’ is only mentioned twice in the whole document yet this was the commission’s core mandate.
“It clearly sets out that it did not intend to give the police a hearing in terms of natural justice. Where policemen gave evidence in private their names have been disclosed but other people who gave evidence in private their names have not been disclosed. This is not an oversight, they said they chose to do so,” he said and added that the commission had also treated in casual manner cases where policemen had been killed.
Asked to comment on demands by a section of leaders that the Police Commissioner resigns, Monari said: “There is no reason whatsoever to warrant the resignation of the police commissioner. All the recommendations in the report about the police were formed out of mere rumours and conjecture.”
A section of leaders have been demanding the resignation of the police chief, saying he had failed to restore order in the country, leading to the killing of over 1500 people and displacement of thousands more.
Among other things, the report accuses the police chief of having failed to produce the correct figures of casualties and deaths reported during the post election violence.
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