Torture is still meted out with impunity in Kenya, particularly by police, said two studies released today to mark the UN world day for torture.
Former Kenyan strongman President Daniel arap Moi's security services were notorious for torture in the latter years of his 24-year-old rule that ended in 2002.
President Mwai Kibaki came to power vowing better human rights, but the reports showed his record is by no means clean.
Presenting its findings in a former state torture chamber in central Nairobi, the Independent Medico-Legal Unit said that of 208 cases of alleged torture it investigated during 2004, 69 per cent involved police officers.
"Torture is real in Kenya and is being meted out with impunity despite the illegality placed on it," it said.
"One wonders how many more of such cases go unreported and whether there is any mechanism put in place to allow wananchi (citizens) to report their horrors in the hand of state agents."
The unit, a respected local non-governmental organisation (NGO), gave various case studies of people sexually humiliated, strung between tables, beaten with a gun butt or garden hoe, raped, and denied medical treatment or food.
"W.I., a 44-year-old male was ... hit with a panga (machete) on the head causing him to bleed profusely to the extent that he lost consciousness," read one case. "When he came to after cold water was poured on his face, the torture continued whereby the police officers beat him, put him on suspension hanging using handcuffs then later smashed his fingers spread on a table."