Three civilians who had been detained at the Central Police Station, Nairobi, on the night of the blogger Albert Ojwang's death have been arrested in connection with the case.
According to the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), the three were instructed by police officers at the station to torture Ojwang to death while in custody.
Although the reasons for their initial arrests have not been made public yet, they are said to have been released shortly after Ojwang's death.
Following IPOA's probe, they were re-arrested on Sunday and are currently being held separately at Kilimani, Muthangari, and Kileleshwa Police Stations.
According to their lawyer, they had been initially detained on a miscellaneous application and held for five days before being released without formal charges.
The trio is set to be arraigned in court on Monday, alongside Officer Commanding Station (OCS) Samson Taalam, who is being held at Lang’ata Police Station.
Meanwhile, IPOA continues the search for two more officers captured on CCTV transporting Ojwang to Mbagathi Hospital, who remain at large.
One of the officers has since been identified as the Central Police Station Deputy OCS Samuel Ng’ang’a, who is said to have been on duty during Ojwang's death.
IPOA has also revealed it has retrieved critical CCTV footage central to the case, some of which had allegedly been tampered with in what investigators suspect was an attempt to conceal evidence.
The investigators now say they are reconstructing events from over 36 hours of footage, including segments believed to show the moments leading up to and following Ojwang’s death.
This latest update comes days after IPOA admitted that key security footage subject to the case was unavailable, as the security cameras had been tampered with during a probe by the National Assembly.
A CCTV technician, who had seen the installation of all 25 CCTV cameras at the station, was named as the suspect in tampering with the footage and was arrested by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) on Friday, June 13.
The man claimed that he had been called past 6:00 am on Saturday, June 8, by a police officer at Central Police and told to immediately go to the station, upon which he was taken to the office of a senior officer, where the DVR is housed and was allegedly asked to delete footage from Thursday, June 6, and Friday, June 7.
