Extra-judiciality.

We have a national Executive that includes an intelligence service and a police service. Both services are under the authority of civilians, I think. "Civilians", in this case, must surely mean Parliament, I think. We also have a Judiciary. It plays a vital role in the administration of justice. It is independent, I think, of the national Executive and Parliament. I think the national Executive and Parliament, too, think that the Judiciary is independent. I think the Judiciary also thinks it is independent. Maybe that is the problem.

Many Kenyans have been murdered in the past five years, it is claimed, by agents of the national Executive. They have been assassinated. They have been killed extra-judicially. They were suspected by someone in the national Executive of having committed some terrible offence, they were, I think, tried in a secret court in absentia, convicted, a sentence was passed, and they were murdered. The Judiciary did not play any role in the trial, conviction and murderous execution of these people.

We know it as extra-judicial killing. The world knows it as extra-judicial killing. The national Executive knows it as "an unfortunate incident which shall be investigated and the perpetrators of the heinous crime brought to book." The pattern, such as it were, is now eerily familiar. Someone will do or say something offensive; offensive, that is, to the national Executive or an important member of the national Executive. He, more often than not it is a "he", will be recorded and his statement or deed will receive prominent coverage by journalists on all popular media: TV, radio, newspaper, weblogs, and such like.

Soon after, with equal prominence, "leaders" will condemn that person, and they will wonder loudly why he has not been investigated and prosecuted for his statement or deed. Key members of the national Executive will make key statements; they are not "key" because they are high up that particular greasy pole, but because they play a key role in the scheme that is about to be executed with brute effectiveness. Soon it will be impossible to think of the man as an innocent bystander; negative thoughts about him will pervade the public commons.

Then the chatter will subside; he may or may not win an unwinnable case in court. He will appear unstoppable. His "grassroots" popularity will soar and he will be linked with other similar thinkers. Then eventually stories about him will slowly fade away. Until a day, if it is in the remote bits of Kenya, or a nigh, if it is a proper urban centre, when he is gunned down, stabbed or poisoned. His death will not come as a surprise; he will have ill-advisedly made statements about his premonitions. They will come true; quite frequently; violently. Then the lament about extra-judical executions will get louder and louder.

If you looked at the pictures of the ill-fated Mandera bus, you will be struck by the fact that two or three days after the attack, the bust has not been attended to by police officers trained in the art of collecting evidence. The scene of the crime is still littered by the detritus of the violent encounter between the bandits and the victims. If they are incapable of even collecting physical evidence from the scene of a brutal murder, do you expect the National Police Service to be able to build a criminal case against a radical preacher using, at best, circumstantial evidence?

Extra-judicial killings are the admissions of the national Executive that it cannot credibly investigate crimes; it cannot credibly prosecute crimes; it cannot guarantee conviction based on any investigation or prosecution its agents conduct. And as a consequence of its wild mistrust of the Judiciary, with a wink and a nod and a hand-shake, "problems are eliminated" without the bother of an investigation, an arrest, a prosecution, a conviction, a sentence and an execution of the sentence. For all the happy-talk of reforms, let us say it together, we are a banana republic with certain sophisticated bits.