The Malindi High Court has ordered Lamu police to produce Yasir Mohamed Ahmed, an ambulance driver and businessman allegedly abducted by security officers in Mkunumbi on the Lamu-Mpeketoni road last month.
The Lamu and Mpeketoni police station commanders and the Lamu County Directorate of Criminal Investigations must bring Mr Ahmed to the court on July 2, Justice Rueben Nyakundi ruled.
Rights advocacy group Muhuri had sued in the court on behalf of Mr Ahmed’s family, demanding that Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Hajji and Inspector-General of Police Hillary Mutyambai produce the driver.
“The family of Mr Ahmed failed to find him in mortuaries, hospitals, Lamu and Mpeketoni police stations since his abduction on June 19 this year,” said Muhuri rapid response officer Francis Auma.
The group had been following the case closely, he said.
“We have enough evidence that the abductors were police officers. We have witnesses to the abduction case which occurred in broad daylight,” he said.
He said cases of abductions by police officers were on the rise in the Coast region. Muhuri is handling two habeas corpus cases of people suspected to have been abducted by police in Lamu and Mombasa counties.
“We have Mr Ahmed’s case and another one for Mr Bakari Mwanyota Mbwana, who was abducted in Mombasa,” he said.
In an affidavit filed in the High Court, Yumna Ali Salim, the wife of the abducted driver, says three armed men wearing masks and security outfits alighted from a GK vehicle after stopping the family’s car a few Kilometres from Mkunumbi and took way her husband.
“The men ordered me, my son, and a passenger to alight from the car, they then took my husband’s driving license from me and commanded us to walk ahead without looking behind, with a warning that they will shoot us if we disobey,” she says.
When she returned to the scene of the abduction, she found that the three armed men with the GK vehicle had disappeared with her husband, leaving the family car in the middle of the road.
“My son moved the car and parked it by the roadside, and we boarded a public service vehicle to complete our journey to Lamu. Since then, I have not heard from my husband, his phone has been switched off and his whereabouts remain unknown.”
The case was reported at the Lamu Police Station under OB NO 31/19/06/2021and the Mpeketoni Police Station under OB NO 16/20/06/2021.
