A group of Kenyan politicians have been released by police, after facing questioning over the alleged discovery of mass graves in the north-east of the country.
Lawmaker Billow Kerrow and other parliamentarians claimed that mass graves had been discovered and suggested they contained the bodies of people killed by the security forces.
Kenya’s Interior Minister Joseph Nkaisserry reacted strongly to the allegations, stating,
"I wish to inform the country and the world at large that nothing was found in any of those sites. Today, following insistence by the political leaders that people might have been buried deep in the ground, excavators were brought in the site to dig for the bodies and nothing was found”.
The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) also issued a statement saying they were "not involved in any way with the disappearance of people or extra judicial killings in Mandera or anywhere in the country”.
Despite the denial, there are reports of mass graves, with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNHCR) stating in April it had discovered mass graves in the north-east, where Kentan security forces are battling Islamist militants.
Human Rights Watch also released a report last year, entitled “Kenya: Killings, Disappearances by Anti-Terror Police”, detailing reports of extrajudicial killings by security forces.
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