GLANCE FACTS
“Many of the Muslim ‘leaders’ and politicians ... wanted to be counted in the chorus of condemnation and demand for an investigation. During Sheikh Rogo’s lifetime, the same leaders were accomplices to his persecution.”
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In broad daylight. In the company of his family. On one of Mombasa’s busiest highways. Sheikh Aboud Rogo was executed. Her beautiful little daughter will possibly never forget. Undoubtedly, traumatised.
It’s a quest for justice I believe she will never abandon. That is if her father’s killers are not brought to book, which is the more likely scenario.
As I looked at the pictures of the slain cleric, I scrutinised the little girl more closely. I cannot possibly imagine the extent of shock or trauma that gutted her veins.
I recalled one of my greatest inspiration. Hafswa Swaleh Nabhan.
Then aged four, fleeing Ethiopia occupation of Somalia with her mother, Hafswa was held for about three weeks at the Inland Container Depot Police Station under the infantile presumption that her father Swaleh Nabhan, eventually executed by the US Special Forces in Somalia (whose body was ‘collected’ by the Special Forces for ‘burial’ at sea) would surrender to end the suffering of her daughter.
Many who know me closely know how Hafswa’s January 2007 predicament shaped and defined my human rights discourse in my very first week and my first assignment as commissioner with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
If a four-year-old can be subject to such unsavoury violation, who from our midst can lay claim to safety? Who can or could ever expect State protection as its obligation? Not the least Sheikh Rogo. The State is guilty of Sheikh Rogo’s execution either in commission or omission and reminiscent of State killings.
Those who executed Sheikh Rogo never anticipated the type of reaction witnessed. Part of which was unjustified. The burning of churches, killing or destruction of property is unIslamic. I am not an Ulammah (religious scholar) but I pretty much understand the basic parameters of Islam. Anything that exceeds these parameters is unIslamic.
My hope is that Sheikh Rogo’s execution will provide the basis for the many questions of execution and dis appearance of Muslim clerics and activists accused of terrorism.
No doubt the Muslim community is pained and angered by this. While Prime Minister Raila Odinga suspect’s foreign elements in the Mombasa protests, I am not in doubt that Kenya’s security agencies are in the thicket of manipulation and control of foreign agencies.
Attempted abduction
Many of the Muslim ‘leaders’ and politicians who have demanded investigations in Sheikh Rogo’s execution were simply reacting to the popular demand of the Muslim community. They wanted to be counted in the chorus of condemnation and demand for an investigation. During Sheikh Rogo’s lifetime, the same leaders were accomplices to his persecution.
Equally Sheikh Rogo was steadfast and unequivocal in his criticism against many of them. They had divergence in opinion and literary ideology.
I knew Sheikh Rogo personally. His run-ins with the State and the entire structure of a compromised Muslim ‘leadership’ made me develop an interest in him.
At time of obvious State excesses, he often sought the intervention of the KNCHR, which has a responsibility to all Kenyans. I last spoke to him during his attempted abduction in Nairobi. I asked him to seek the KNCHR’s intervention.
Those who were with him on that day indicated to me that Sheikh Rogo had indicated to them that he knew that ‘they’ were after his life. That when that day comes, his prayer was that Allah grants him martyrdom and paradise.
We might never test the ‘evidence’ on Sheikh Rogo in a court of competent jurisdiction. But earthly predicaments are over. I pray that Allah rest his soul in peace and grants his prayer.
The writer is a lawyer and former commissioner with the KNCHR.
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