Photo/FILE Some Mombasa Republican Council members outside the Mombasa Law Courts in December last year. Police have arrested 37 of its members for allegedly taking part in illegal meetings in the South Coast between Thursday and Saturday.
By DANIEL NYASSY dnyassy@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Sunday, April 22 2012 at 22:30
Posted Sunday, April 22 2012 at 22:30
IN SUMMARY
- Outlawed group claims there is a plot to provoke it into violence but officers say the suspects were picked up for attending an illegal meeting, detectives also want to recover stolen guns
Police have arrested 37 members of the outlawed Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) for allegedly taking part in illegal meetings in the South Coast between Thursday and Saturday.
Sources said the detectives were also hunting for guns stolen violently from police officersin the last three months by suspected members of MRC in Malindi, Kilifi, Chonyi and Likoni.
But the group dismissed the claims, saying police were targeting its leaders for elimination.
“We have information that we, MRC top leaders, are being trailed with a view to eliminating us. This is not strange because an activist, Mr Samir Khan, who was not even an MRC member was exterminated recently and nobody has been arrested. We don’t know whether he was killed because he was a Muslim or simply because he was a coastal,” said MRC spokesman Mohamed Rashid Mraja.
MRC chairman Omar Mwamnwadzi claimed 51 of their members had been arrested in what he termed as “a deliberate government provocation to push MRC to resort to violence”.
Speaking to journalists at Masjid Al-Ridhwan in Majengo, Mombasa, on Saturday, Mr Mraja said the suspects were arrested at Tiribe, Mkongani and Burani in the South Coast.
“Police squads on Thursday went from house to house at 3am and rounded up 11 innocent MRC members at Tiribe, nine at Mkongani and two at Burani,” he said.
Twenty nine others, according to Mr Mraja, were arrested at Mwananyamala on Saturday and locked up in police stations in Msambweni Division and Kwale.
He asked why the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (Gema) and Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu (Kamatusa) groups were allowed to hold “free meetings and freedom to do what they want” and not Coast people.
“Coast people, just like the Gema and Kamatusa, have the freedom to meet. Why arrest us and leave those others? Why apply the law selectively? This is why we are crying for justice and want secession,” he said.
Kwale police boss Richard Mugwai confirmed in a short message text on Sunday that 37 MRC members had been arrested but did not divulge details.
District commissioner Benjamin Njoroge referred the Nation to his Msambweni counterpart for comment, saying the arrests were made outside his jurisdiction.
Provincial police chief Aggrey Adoli declined to comment on the arrests.
“My office has decentralised information-giving to the grassroots. Contact the DC and OCPD in the South Coast. I have found that it’s not proper for everything and every statement to come from the PPO,” he said.
None of the officers commented on the claims that top MRC members were being trailed.
However, a police source at the Coast provincial headquarters said the crackdown on the outlawed group would continue. (READ: Elders ask MRC to end secession talk and chaos threat)
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