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Nairobi (Agenzia Fides) - Hundreds of human rights activists took to the streets of Nairobi to protest murder of Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) ICT Manager, Chris Msando.
The body of Chris Msando, the IEBC systems development manager, was found with signs of torture in a forest in Kikuyu on the outskirts of the City on July 30, a few days before the general election of August 8.
"Msando's murder is a source of very, very significant concern and we want to tell the IEBC (election commission) that there are a lot of people out there who are concerned about the killing", said George Kegoro, director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. "Kenya has an unfortunate history of assassinations for political expediency and there is a chilling familiarity in the sequence of events… that makes it difficult to dismiss the sinking feeling that we have been here before", he added.
Msando had made several television appearances in the days before his death to assure Kenyans of the reliability of the electronic voting system which crashed during the 2013 elections leading to accusations of poll fraud.
The electoral body’s Chairman Wafula Chebukati called on government to provide security to IEBC staff, but sought to play down fears Msando’s killers had obtained any sensitive information and added, " Whoever tortured him I don’t think he got anything. All our passwords are intact. We have service providers and, as it is, none of the commission employees have these passwords so let us not speculate", he concluded. (LM.) (Agenzia Fides, 2/8/2017)
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