A Kenyan journalist who reported allegations of police corruption fears his life is in danger after he spotted two plain clothes police officers and one of them pointed a gun at him.
The intimation follows a report by Stephen Nzioka, a correspondent for The Standard newspaper based in Kenya’s Makueni County, who wrote a story under the headline: “Police held suspect for three days before executing him.”
And he now suspects some police officers are out to harm him after he revealed how police officers under the directive of Wote Police Station Officer OCS allegedly shot dead a suspect, Ngoma Kaleli. For the story, sources who had requested anonymity for fear of reprisal revealed how the suspect was arrested by police in plain clothes on Wednesday evening, put in custody and executed later in secrecy.
The incident has attracted the curiosity of the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) which has dispatched investigators to the county’s capital, but the focus now rests on the journalist.
Nzioka said he met two police officers near his residence in plain clothes, who stopped and greeted him and he recognised one of them.
He said: “One of them had a pistol tucked on his waist. As they walked a few steps, I turned back and saw one of them pointing at me. I am now in great fear.”
He said he was too scared to go to the police, and instead wrote about in his paper to highlight what had happened.
He added: “It would be an exercise in futility to report the matter to the same people whom I am complaining about.”
Standard Group Administration Editor, Andy Kagwa, said the company had taken up the matter.
