The United States has flagged Kenyan authorities over the alleged abduction of Billionaire Jaswant Singh Rai which occurred in 2023.
In its 2023 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, which was released on April 22, 2024, the US State Department highlighted that there were still cases of arbitrary arrests in Kenya despite this being against the law.
It was highlighted that arbitrary arrests by authorities were mostly effected on young men living in the informal settlement, activists, bloggers and journalists.
For Rai's case, the report noted that the abduction occurred at a time when the Kenya Kwanza administration accused him of undermining government reforms in the sugar industry.
However, it was acknowledged that no agency was identified to have staged the abduction.
"In August unknown men abducted prominent businessman Jaswant Singh Rai and held him incommunicado.
"Police were investigating the detention, which some suspected was carried out by security agents over allegations Rai was sabotaging government efforts to reform the sugar industry," read the report in part.
Billionaire Rai was abducted in August 2023 with police launching investigations on the incident.
At the time, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations(DCI) denied that the billionaire with investments in the sugar industry was in their custody.
"We are not holding him. We do not have a detention facility, but the matter is under investigation," DCI boss Amin Mohamed stated then.
Police also launched investigations into the alleged abduction days before his release.
No report has been provided so far on the identity of the abductors. Rai has also not given details on the identity of his abductors.
On the other hand, the US has also called out authorities over extra-judicial killings.
"The human rights NGO Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) documented 111 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings between January and September and implicated 99 police stations.
"For example, Erick Omondi Abok was shot in the head during demonstrations in Kisumu on July 20, and IMLU reported the autopsy indicated the shot was fired from a high-calibre weapon at a distance. The youngest victim, a boy age three, died from teargas suffocation while playing outside his home in one of Nairobi’s informal settlements," read the report in part.
Other issues of concern were; forced disappearances, unlawful searches on property, and harassment of journalists among others.
