Kenyan court finds 3 policemen, 1 informant guilty of murder of lawyer Willie Kimani

Three Kenyan policemen and an informant were found guilty Friday for the killing in 2016 of a human rights lawyer and two others.

The court in the capital, Nairobi, will deliver their sentence at a later date. The court acquitted a fourth officer of the charges, citing a lack of evidence.

The killing of attorney Willie Kimani, taxi driver Joseph Muiruri and motorcycle taxi driver Josephat Mwenda sparked days of peaceful demonstrations and a strike by Kenyan lawyers demanding an end to the extra-judicial killings by police that some say are pervasive.

The protests later turned violent when motorcycle taxi drivers set fire to the police station where the three victims are believed to have been held before they were killed.

Their bodies later were pulled out of a river.

Mwenda’s testicles had been crushed and his skull was fractured, and the other two bodies had injuries from a blunt object, a pathologist said in a report presented to the court.

Kenyan police have sometimes been accused of summarily killing suspects against whom they have no evidence. They also are often accused of running death squads, among other abuses.

Kimani worked in Kenya as a lawyer for the International Justice Mission, a U.S.-based rights group.