The killing of Kenyan child Samantha Pendo, police brutality and the long wait for justice

Seven years after their daughter was killed in a midnight police brutality in Kenya during the post-election riots, Joseph Oloo Abanja and Lensa Achieng are still angry as the case against the accused has been delayed again. .

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

After each postponement or small improvement, the couple is inundated with phone calls. Each moment of anticipation leads to disappointment in their quest for justice.

The family lives in the western town of Kisumu – an opposition stronghold where riots erupted in August 2017 amid anger over the results of elections that were later rerun due to irregularities.

Their small house was along the road in the Nyalenda slums where there was a protest on August 11 where anti-violence police were deployed.

That night the couple locked their wooden door and barricaded it with furniture. In the middle of the night, they heard the doors of the neighbors being broken and some of the people inside were being beaten.

It wasn’t long before the police arrived at their door.

“They knocked and kicked many times [but] I refused to open,” Mr Abanja 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 area where they threw tear gas into the one-room house, forcing the family out.

Mr. Abanja says he was ordered to sleep outside the door and the beatings began.

“They were walking on my head so I raised my hands, and they beat my hands until they couldn’t hold them anymore.”

His wife came out of the house holding Samantha who was breathing hard because of the tear gas and she did not come back.

“They continued to beat me [with clubs] while holding my daughter,” said Ms Achieng.

The next thing he heard was his daughter holding him tight “as if she was in pain”.

“I answered him and what came out of his mouth? There was foam.”

He raised the alarm saying that they had killed his daughter and at that time Mr. Abanja was being beaten and was ordered to give first aid.

The child arrived but was badly injured.

The couple said that the police then left immediately, the neighbors helped them and rushed Samantha to the hospital. He died three days later in the intensive care unit.

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

12 police officers are expected to be charged with murder, rape and torture – but the hearing of what will happen, where they will be asked to plead, has not yet ended.

One of the lawyers for the victims, Willys Otieno, believes that the delay is due to the lack of political democracy to deliver justice to the victims of election violence.

Uhuru Kenyatta went on to win a repeat election later in 2017 – the opposition candidate withdrew from the race. His deputy William Ruto, with whom he later fell out, won the next vote – taking over in September 2022.

“The state is no longer interested in prosecuting the perpetrators, [and] now it is up to the victims’ advocates – those of us who work with non-governmental organizations and human rights organizations to press for cases to be registered and the accused to go to court,” Mr Otieno told the BBC.

He accused the current director of public prosecutions (DPP) of “acting like a lawyer”.

“It is not even the suspects who have applied to the court to postpone the case – it is the DPP who has applied to the court to postpone the admission of the crime,” said the lawyer about the two unsuccessful attempts to postpone it last October and November.

A third attempt was due to take place two days ago but was postponed due to the transfer of the presiding judge – postponed until the end of the month.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) told the BBC that it could not handle a request for comment, but wrote to X that “the case remains one of the most important in recent history, as the death of Baby Pendo symbolizes the tragic consequences of police brutality during the post-election violence of 2017”.

But those involved in the case find the delay troubling.

“It was the Office of the DPP that started this case, they are the ones who came to us a few years ago. They asked us to join the victims’ group that was established to ensure that they will have their witnesses in the case,” Irungu Houghton, the head of the rights organization Amnesty International Kenya, told the BBC.

After the initial investigation, the then DPP, Nurdin’ Hajji, started a public inquiry into the death of the child Samantha. The jury found the police guilty.

After that, the public prosecutor ordered further investigations into other crimes caused by police actions in August 2017, and brought in independent constitutional investigation agencies, civil society organizations and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

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

In October 2022, the prosecutor then demanded that the suspects be charged, for the first time in Kenya’s history under the International Criminal Law.

Those to be charged include commanders deemed responsible as high-ranking officials – a first in Kenya.

In September 2023, a new DPP, Renson M Ingonga came in, but there has been little movement in the case since then.

There appears to be a “reluctance to try to prosecute this case,” Mr Houghton said.

Mr Otieno says the victims’ lawyers may consider seeking justice through private prosecution or going to the East African Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court (ICC) if the delay continues.

Kisumu governor and opposition leader Peter Anyango’ Nyong’o has now appealed to the chief justice to look into the matter and “find out immediately if there is a person or groups of people who are destroying this case to protect certain people”.

If not, he agrees that the ICC may be the way to go: “We may be forced to write to the ICC to step in if local courts continue to delay cases, because justice delayed is justice denied.”

Samantha’s parents support this idea as without justice they say they will not heal – each setback opens their wounds.

“It doesn’t matter how I will do it, but I will make sure that I am fair,” said Mr. Abanja, who is 40 years old and earns a living by driving a tuk-tuk.

“Because they took something precious from me – she was everything to me, I named that girl my mother.”