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Police hunt down banned sect’s leader

The Standard, Kenya
Oct. 8, 2005
www.eastandard.net

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Saturday October 8, 2005

Police yesterday stormed a Nairobi hotel where suspected Mungiki members had been holding a meeting, in a bid to arrest top officials of the outlawed movement.

But the officers were too late because the followers, acting on a tip off, earlier moved to another venue where they hurriedly addressed the Press.

And as this was happening, the sect leader Maina Njenga was in Nyeri where he told The Standard by telephone the proscribed outfit would join forces with other ‘militia’ groups to form a political party.

Njenga said Mungiki has shed off its religious cloak and replaced it with a well-structured political party, whose membership was the youth and the unemployed.

On Thursday, he said the group was no longer called Mungiki but the National Youth Alliance.

In Nairobi, the suspects rushed to board different matatus at Hurlingham shopping centre as police pursued them.

The sect vice–chairman Lawi Wambare and secretary-general James Ng’ang’a are said o have been part of the group.

A combined force of Flying Squad, regular police and CID officers from Kilimani Police Division pursued the group that alighted at Ngong Road and fled towards Kawangware, with the officers in pursuit.

However, they did not arrest anybody.

The raid came a day after 18 suspected Mungiki followers were arrested at a palatial house in Kitengela, Kajiado District.

The commando wing of the General Service Unit-donning masks and bullet-proof jackets-descended on the house in the bushy outskirts of Kitengela town on Wednesday evening and laid siege.

Inside, they found the movement’s flag and a flower-lined oathing shrine with flower arranged in the sect’s green, black and red colours.

During the press conference yesterday, the officials of the alliance declared they were ready to face death “in defence of our dignity as Kenyans and human beings”.

They said they had studied the proposed new constitution and would reject it at the referendum.

“We have come to the conclusion that the draft is not good for our country,” said Ng’ang’a.

They also demanded the immediate release of the 18 suspects arrested in Kitengela and to be allowed to visit them in police cells.

The members further demanded that GSU officers, who seized the Kitengela house, to vacate, saying they would take legal action against the Government over the arrest of their members.

In Nyeri, Njenga said Mungiki was dead just like other vigilante groups like the Taliban and Kamjeshi, which at one time held the country at ransom with violence orgies.

“We are now brothers working for a common purpose. We do not fight. We have joined forces to form the Kenya National Youth Alliance which is not a domain of one ethnic group,” he said.

He said he was the patron of the Kenya National Youth Alliance, while a former Kiambu politician was the party leader.

Njenga said some of the alliance’s projects were at his 10-acre piece of land in Kitengela which was raided by the GSU officers.