Kenyan police raid offices of pro-democracy organisation

Kenyan police raided the office of a pro-democracy organisation that has raised questions over preparations for last week's disputed elections. Picture: AP Photo/Jerome Delay

Kenyan police raided the office of a pro-democracy organisation that has raised questions over preparations for last week's disputed elections. Picture: AP Photo/Jerome Delay

Published Aug 16, 2017

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Nairobi - Kenyan police and tax

authorities on Wednesday raided the office of a pro-democracy

organisation that has raised questions over preparations for

last week's disputed elections.

"They are outside the gates right now," Gladwell Otieno, the

executive director of Africa Centre for Open Governance

(AfriCOG), told Reuters by phone.

Incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta won the August 8 election

by a margin of 1.4 million votes. 

International and domestic

observers say the election process was largely free and fair but

opposition leader Raila Odinga has disputed the results.

Kenyan television showed pictures of the raid during which

civil society leaders challenged the search warrant. 

Human

rights lawyer Maina Kiai asked why tax authorities had to bring

three vanloads of police.

"They say they have got a search warrant ... (but) the

search warrant does not name AfriCOG. The order does not specify

what they are coming to do," he said on television.

The raid follows letters from the government on Tuesday

accusing AfriCOG and another civil society organisation, the

Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), of administrative and tax

violations.

The threats to shut the organisations, which played a

leading role in organising civil society to question and monitor

the elections, provoked condemnation from the United Nations and

international rights groups like Amnesty International and Human

Rights Watch.

Reuters

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