Kenya’s baby Samantha Pendo killing, police brutality and the long wait for justice

Seven years after their infant daughter was killed during a brutal police operation in Kenya in the middle of the night at a time of post-election tension, Joseph Olu Abanga and Lensa Achieng remain deeply shaken as the case against the officers allegedly involved has been postponed once again.

“It’s a scar that will never fade,” Ms Aching, a hotel worker, told the BBC about the death of six-month-old Samantha Bindu, who died of a fractured skull and internal bleeding.

After every postponement or small development, the couple is inundated with calls. Every moment of expectation leads to disappointment in their search for justice.

The family lives in the western city of Kisumu, an opposition stronghold where riots broke out in August 2017 amid anger over election results that were eventually re-run due to irregularities.

Their small house was located along a road in the informal settlement of Nyalanda, the scene of protests on August 11, where riot police were deployed.

That night, the couple closed their wooden door and barricaded it with furniture. At around midnight, they heard their neighbors’ doors being smashed and some residents being beaten.

It didn’t take long for police officers to arrive at their door.

“They knocked and kicked him several times [but] “I refused to open,” Abania told the BBC, adding that he pleaded with them to save his family of four.

But the beating continued until the police found a small space through which they threw a tear gas bomb into the one-room house, forcing the family to leave.

Mr. Abania says he was ordered to lie outside the door and then the beatings began.

“They were aiming for my head, so I raised my hand, and they beat my hand until I couldn’t hold on anymore.”

His wife came out of the house carrying Samantha, who was having difficulty breathing due to the tear gas, and did not survive either.

“They went ahead and beat me up [with clubs] While I was holding my daughter,” says Ms. Achieng.

The next thing she felt was her daughter holding her tightly “as if she was in pain.”

“I turned her over and what was coming out of her mouth? It was foam.”

She screamed that they had killed her daughter, and at that moment the beating stopped and Mr. Abania ordered first aid.

The child came but was badly injured.

The couple says the officers quickly left and neighbors helped them take Samantha to the hospital. She died three days later in intensive care.

Their quest for justice has been long and frustrating, like dozens of others caught up in the post-election violence.

It was expected that 12 police officers would be charged with murder, rape and torture, but the hearing at which these charges will be held, and at which they will be asked to enter a plea, has not yet been held.

Willis Otieno, one of the victims’ lawyers, believes the delay is due to a lack of political will to achieve justice for the victims of electoral violence.

Uhuru Kenyatta went on to win a re-election later in 2017, and the opposition candidate withdrew from the competition. His deputy William Ruto, with whom he later fell out, prevailed in the following vote, taking office in September 2022.

“The state is no longer interested in prosecuting the perpetrators. [and] “It is now up to the victims’ lawyers – those of us working with NGOs and human rights groups to push for charges to be registered and the accused brought to trial,” Otieno told the BBC.

He accuses the current Director of Public Prosecutions of “acting like the accused’s lawyer.”

The lawyer said about two failed attempts to receive a guilty plea last October and November: “Even the defendants were not the ones who submitted a request to the court to postpone, but rather the Director of Public Prosecutions who submitted a request to the court to postpone accepting the guilty plea.”

The third attempt was scheduled to take place two days ago, but was postponed due to the transfer of the Chief Justice – and was rescheduled for the end of the month.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions told the BBC it could not deal with a request for comment, but posted on the Consequences of police brutality during the 2017 post-election unrest.”

But those involved in the case find the delay troubling.

“It was the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions that initiated this case, and they were the ones who approached us several years ago. They asked us to join a victim support group that was set up essentially to ensure that they would have witnesses to their crimes. They were the ones who approached us several years ago. They asked us to join a victim support group that had been set up essentially to ensure that they would have witnesses to their crimes,” said Ironjo Houghton, head of Amnesty International. In Kenya, to the BBC.

After preliminary investigations, the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, Noureddine Haji, launched a public investigation into the death of baby Samantha. The judge found the police guilty.

The Prosecutor subsequently ordered further investigations into other cases arising from the police operation in August 2017, bringing in independent constitutional investigative bodies, civil society, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The investigation revealed evidence that the Director of Public Prosecutions said pointed to “the systematic use of violence, including murder, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, against civilians, all of which constitute serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity.”

In October 2022, the Public Prosecutor then sought to charge the suspects, for the first time in Kenya’s history under the International Crimes Act.

The defendants include commanders considered responsible due to their responsibilities as senior officers, another first in Kenya.

In September 2023, a new DAP MP, Renson M. Ingunga, took office, but there has been little movement on the issue since then.

Houghton says there appears to be “an unwillingness to try to prosecute this case.”

Mr Otieno says lawyers for the victims may consider seeking justice through a private trial or going to the East African Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court if the delay continues.

Samantha’s parents support this idea because they say they cannot heal without justice — every delay reopens their wounds.

“It doesn’t matter how I do it, but I will make sure I get justice,” says Abanga, now 40 and a tuk-tuk driver.

“Because they took something so precious from me. She was everything to me, that little girl that I named after my mother.”