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"Shot Mungiki member dies"

by Stephen Muiruri and Bob Odalo ("Daily Nation," January 16, 2001)

A Mungiki sect member died of gunshot wounds yesterday.
Mr Jackson Kyalo Kilewe was shot by police as they foiled a bid by about 200 Mungiki followers to invade the Mwiki police post, Nairobi, on Sunday.
The raiders engaged the police in a three-hour battle after a prayer meeting was dispersed.
The police opened fire when they were overpowered by the sect members, who pelted the post with stones.
The dead man was among four people who were shot by police and admitted to the Kenyatta National Hospital.
The Nairobi provincial police boss, Mr Geoffrey Muathe, said they were holding five Mungiki members for interrogation.
Meanwhile, police have arrested four people and seized four loaded pistols in Nairobi.
Two suspects were arrested in Parklands after they confronted Mr Bhimji Ranji on his way to a temple.
Mr Muathe said officers on patrol shot one suspect in the leg and cornered his accomplice as he attempted to flee.
Elsewhere, six gangsters seized a police officer attached to Nairobi's Central Police Station and relieved him of a pistol yesterday.
The officer was walking to the station when the gangsters seized him on Tom Mboya Street.
Meanwhile, the government yesterday withdrew an assault and incitement case facing five alleged Mungiki sect members from a Nairobi court, only to charge them with the same offences in Machakos town.
At the same time, the Mungiki sect leader, Mr Ibrahim Ndura Waruinge was charged with two other people for organising an unlawful meeting in Nairobi on Sunday.
The court heard that the meeting held at a Nairobi estate in which Mungiki members allegedly overran a police post left one person dead and others injured.
Lawyers Waithaka Mwangi and Kibe Mungai for Mr Waruinge termed the new charges facing their clients as "fictitious".
Mr Soita will rule tomorrow on Mr Waruinge's and his co-accused's application for bail.
The prosecution said the charges are very serious and opposed the release of Mr Waruinge on bond.
In the previous Nairobi case, David Wakaba Chege, Nelson Githii, Stephen Oloo and Herman Kungu who were charged with the same offence of attending unlawful meeting and stripping women naked in Kayole estate in Nairobi for the second time denied the charges before Senior Resident Magistrate Mr Samuel Soita.
They could not immediately raise the amount and were escorted to the Machakos Prison.
Mr Waruinge, apart from allegedly organising the Sunday meeting, was also accused of participating in an unlawful assembly at Waithaka estate in Nairobi on January 7 and also assaulting a police officer on duty on the same day.
But the prosecution, led by Insp James Ndunda, said Waruinge committed Sunday's offence while still on bond from a previous crime and said he could not be trusted to keep the peace if granted bail.
Mr Mwangi said the government could not be taken seriously on the case and wondered why it had to wait until yesterday before arresting Mr Waruinge for an offence committed on January 7 and on Sunday.


What Is Falun Gong? See "Falun Gong 101", by Massimo Introvigne

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