The Kenyan Law Of Justice & Restitution Is Not Dead, It’s Just Collecting Receipts: In Memory Of Albert Ojwang

Let us begin with an inconvenient truth for this regime: You may wield the gun, but you do not own the law. You may command the police, but you do not own the Constitution. You may lie with rehearsed press releases, but you will never outrun justice’s slow, deliberate steps. As an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, I say this not as rhetoric but as prophecy: every abducted activist, every tortured dissenter, every deported patriot, and every Kenyan unlawfully executed shall find justice. Maybe not today. Maybe not even tomorrow. But certainly, inevitably, eternally.

The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, was not enacted as a polite suggestion. It is binding, supreme, and alive. It breathes in the spirit of Article 1, which gives sovereignty to the people. And yet, this government, in all its bloated arrogance, seems to think that Chapter Four on the Bill of Rights is merely decorative. That Article 29 (freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment) can be suspended by a WhatsApp message from a cabinet secretary. That Article 49, which guarantees the rights of arrested persons, can be overwritten by a nod from a shadowy police commander. It cannot. It will not. And those responsible for these constitutional abominations will answer for it. In court. Under oath. Behind bars.

Take, for instance, the recent death—let’s call it what it is, execution—of Albert Ojwang. A young man abducted in broad daylight, detained in murky legality, and found dead in police custody. The explanation offered? Suicide by skull concussion against a wall. To quote that bastion of investigative credibility known as “a police statement,” he injured himself fatally by repeatedly hitting his head on the wall. I suppose next time he might stab himself in the back seven times and blame it on gravity.

To believe this nonsense, one must suspend not only disbelief but also all cerebral activity. Yet, the National Police Service and its Inspector General believe Kenyans are so mentally impoverished, so legally illiterate, that such contemptuous tales will suffice. They will not. The Constitution, the Penal Code, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights all say one thing in unison: you cannot kill people and call it patriotism. You cannot torture and call it national security. And you cannot abduct, detain, deport, and call it a matter of internal affairs.

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The President of this Republic, in whose name these crimes are being committed, must understand: Article 131 of the Constitution gives you power, yes, but it also burdens you with responsibility. You are the symbol of national unity, not the face of executive impunity. You are required to respect, uphold, and safeguard the Constitution. You have not. Instead, you have allowed — or worse, authorized — rogue police operations, enforced disappearances, and now, custodial deaths. This makes you not just a spectator but a co-conspirator.

The Inspector General of Police, the man who signs off on press statements so intellectually offensive they should be classified as assault, must also face the law. Section 24 of the National Police Service Act requires the IG to exercise command with professionalism and compliance with the law. But what we are witnessing is not leadership; it is thuggery in uniform. It is not service; it is state-sanctioned terrorism. You do not manage a police force, Sir. You run a cartel in a blue uniform.

And what of IPOA, that once bright star of oversight? Reduced now to issuing “investigation notices” after every public killing. IPOA has become the national undertaker for justice: always there to confirm the death, never present to stop the murder. And let us not forget Parliament, that sleepy club of suits and sycophants. Elected to defend the people, they now specialize in defending their stomachs. Shame on every MP who remains silent as young Kenyans are butchered by the regime.

To the police officers involved, here is your legal refresher: Article 238 demands that national security respect human rights and freedoms. Article 239 creates security organs to protect Kenyans, not to become the greatest threat to their lives. Section 61 of the Penal Code defines murder. It does not provide a clause for “accidental death due to resistance to arrest” when your victim was unarmed, handcuffed, and praying for their life. And yes, when you obey illegal orders, you become an accomplice, not a hero.

Even Article 50, the one about fair trial, has been rendered comic. People are abducted at night, denied access to counsel, held incommunicado, and then trotted before courts like trophy fish—bloodied, bruised, and broken. Due process, it seems, has been replaced with police process: capture, torture, deny, and blame the deceased. Rinse, repeat, and post on Twitter.

Our judiciary, too, must resist the temptation of convenience. You are not clerks in this grand theatre. You are custodians of justice. When you issue production orders that the police ignore, issue summons, and enforce contempt. When rights are violated, don’t write essays of condemnation—write orders with consequences. If the Executive chooses lawlessness, the Judiciary must choose courage.

It is laughable that in a country with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and the National Intelligence Service, the only intelligence the system seems to produce is how to make a crime scene look like an accident. Kenya is beginning to resemble a crime syndicate that occasionally hosts elections for legitimacy. The only difference between a gang and a government is a constitution—and this one’s being trampled on.

Let us be clear: justice is not a suggestion. It is a debt. And like all debts, it collects interest. Every unlawful detention adds a paragraph to the indictment. Every police bullet adds a line to the charge sheet. Every lie from the podium, every insult to our intelligence, every mutilated truth—they are all entries in the ledger of judgment.

There is no statute of limitations on murder. There is no amnesty for torture. And there is no absolution for cowardice. Those who abducted, those who signed off on it, those who tortured, those who lied, and those who silenced the mourning with force—all of them shall answer. At the ICC, if necessary. In domestic courts, preferably. But in the court of history, inevitably.

Justice, you see, has a terrible memory. She forgets nothing. She may take her sweet time, sipping tea while autocracies crumble, but when she arrives, she comes bearing chains and carrying names. And those names will include presidents, police commanders, ministers of interior, state prosecutors, and even that junior officer who believed “I was just following orders” was a suitable defense. It is not. Ask Nuremberg.

Albert Ojwang is not just another casualty. He is an indictment. A blood-soaked post-it note pasted on the conscience of this nation. He is a warning and a witness. A testimony that this regime, however arrogant, cannot escape the reckoning.

You may kill the body, but you cannot silence the truth. You may intimidate the press, but you cannot assassinate the facts. And you may bury the dead, but you cannot inter the Constitution.

The law is not dead. It’s just collecting receipts. And when it returns, it shall not knock. It will kick the doors open. With warrants. And consequences.

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