A lawyer for the Christian legal aid group International Justice Mission (IJM) has disappeared, and was last seen locked in a metal container with his client yelling for help, reports The New York Times.
Willie Kimani, a lawyer in Nairobi, Kenya, was representing the motorcycle taxi driver Josephat Mwenda in a case against a police officer who had shot him accidentally. When Mwenda complained, the officer retaliated by accusing Mwenda of a variety of false charges. Despite the harassment, Mwenda pursued the complaint in court.
On June 23, Kimani and Mwenda left the courtroom together and got into a taxi. After that, they and their taxi driver disappeared.
Some passers-by saw Kimani and Mwenda on a police base locked in a cage, and smuggled out a note from Mwenda that read “Call my wife. I’m in danger.”
According to The New York Times:
That is the last anyone has seen or heard from Mr. Kimani, Mr. Mwenda or the taxi driver, human rights advocates say. Their phones abruptly went dead on Thursday night. Police officers at the base where the toilet paper note was reportedly thrown out the window denied ever seeing the three.
Early the next morning, the taxi was found more than 30 miles away, parked on a road in a deserted, misty tea plantation, with the doors locked.
Many of Mr. Kimani’s colleagues now fear that police officers may have killed the three. And while Kenya is widely known as corrupt and violent, and is dogged by a long history of impunity, the brazen disappearing of a witness, a taxi driver and a well-known human rights defender is considered far beyond the norm in this country.
IJM says that the taxi driver, Joseph Muiruri, has been abducted as well, though it was unclear whether he was in the cage with Mwenda and Kimani.
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