A Kenyan court on Thursday has sentenced a former senior police officer to death for killing a detainee in his custody, one of the harshest punishments over widespread police brutality in the East African country.
Nahashon Mutua, a former senior police officer, was convicted on Dec. 13 of the murder of Martin Koome, who was found dead in a cell at a Nairobi police station where Mutua was in charge back in 2013.
Mutua has fourteen days to appeal against the conviction.
Kenya’s Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), established in 2011 after police killed hundreds of Kenyans during post-election unrest in 2007, can investigate police on its own initiative or after receiving a public complaint.
Two other policemen were sentenced to death by the High Court last November for murdering a fellow officer and two civilians in a Nairobi bar in 2014.