A former Kenyan police officer was sentenced to death on Friday for killing a human rights lawyer, his client and a taxi driver.
Frederick Leliman and three others were convicted of the 2016 killings in one of several counts of alleged police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Kenya.
Attorney Willie Kimani represented a motorcyclist who was suing Lilliman for shooting him at a traffic barricade. Lehman later began threatening and intimidating the man.
The bodies of Kimani, his client Josephat Mwendwa and taxi driver Joseph Mweruri were found in the Ol Donyo Sabuk river in the east of the country days after they were reported missing.
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Evidence presented in court showed that after a court hearing on 22 June 2016, the three were kidnapped, briefly detained and then taken away and killed in the open field. Their bodies were found on July 1st.
Leliman was sentenced to death, former officers Stephen Chipurit and Silvia Wanjiku to 30 and 24 years in prison respectively, and police informant Peter Ngugi to 20 years in prison. A fourth former police officer, Leonard Mwangi, was acquitted.
Those sentenced to death by Kenyan courts are serving life imprisonment. The last execution in Kenya took place in 1987. The four have 14 days to appeal.
The killings sparked a series of protests by lawyers and human rights defenders because Kenyan police have been accused of brutal and extrajudicial killings in the past, but few police officers have been convicted.
