Residents of a poor and overcrowded area of the Kenya’s capital have told a public meeting that they suspect a death squad operating inside Kenya’s police and is using Facebook to target and kill people that they believe to be gang members.
A tearful young woman told the crowded hall meeting in Nairobi’s Kayole residential estate last month, “I have lost two husbands in one year,” balancing a toddler on her side.
Other people also came forward to the mic to share similar stories about losing very young relatives aged between 15 and 24.
The state prosecutor, human rights activists and top police officials, who were also at the gathering, listened patiently as their community leaders explained how these young people, who are suspected to be criminals, were profiled by “gangster hunters” within various Facebook groups.
From the Dandora Community, Wilfred Olal told the meeting, “They profile them on Facebook, after one week or a month they shoot them, and put pictures of their dead bodies on Facebook.”
The posted photos on Facebook, which sometimes show close-up shots of split heads open by bullets usually come with a warning that other criminals would be treated to the same fate. And although some of the pictures are blurred by Facebook, a user, however, can choose to un-blur them.
The Kayole residents say that various Facebook groups, some public and some others are closed, are updated with very disturbing pictures almost every day.
A researcher at Moi University in Kenya, Duncan Omanga who has been closely following such Facebook pages for three years now says that anonymous digital personas by suspected police officers are used to spy on their targets.
The person behind the Facebook accounts is not a police officer, but [a civilian] passionate about security matters.”