Kenyan police crack down on cult after spate of beheadings

A wave of beheadings carried out by a shadowy quasi-religious sect has rocked Kenya, prompting a brutal police crackdown in which more than 30 people have been killed in three days in a Nairobi slum.

More than a dozen people have been tortured and killed in the past month by the feared Mungiki sect, a criminal gang that runs a protection racket in Mathare, a desperately poor slum in eastern Nairobi. Decapitated bodies have been discovered floating in the river which runs through the district.

Hundreds of police officers, including paramilitaries, descended on the slum yesterday, ripping down tin shacks and beating up residents in their search for Mungiki members. The sound of gunfire could be heard throughout the day and at least 12 people were confirmed dead.

Residents claimed that the area's Mungiki members had fled and alleged that police had killed innocent locals.

Police blamed the Mungiki for the killing of two officers, shot dead on Monday night. Some 22 people were killed by police on Tuesday and the police operation intensified yesterday.

Hundreds of men, women and children were rounded up and detained. Outside a residential building, 20 paramilitary police prepared to smash down a front door. A hundred metres away, five paramilitary officers tore down a small shack selling mobile phone credit and pushed the owner, face first, into the mud.

One officer pointed his rifle at a group of 50 people standing near a petrol station, threatening to open fire if they did not move. Eyewitnesses said that police had beaten residents, including women and children, with clubs. "They have shot two people there," an old man with a wispy grey beard said, pointing at the remains of a small shack. He said that residents were too scared to tell the police where Mungiki members were hiding. "If you show the Mungiki to the police you are dead," he said.

The sect , drawn from Kenya's Kikuyu tribe, claims to be inspired by the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule. Police now believe the sect has become an organised crime gang, comparing it to the Italian Mafia. Most of those killed and beheaded in the past month are believed to have been "defectors", assassinated by the Mungiki for becoming police informers.

The sect has long terrorised this area of Nairobi, a desperately poor slum that is home to 500,000 people, most of whom live on less than 50p a day. It runs protection rackets, threatening to kill anyone who involves the police. Every household is expected to pay them 100 shillings (80p) a month. Car owners have to pay extra, as do stallholders. Residents are forced to buy electricity and water from the sect at extortionate prices.

Owners of matatus, the 14-seat minibuses used for public transport, are stung more than most. "We have to give them 300 shillings a day," 10 per cent of daily profits, said one matatu owner in Mathare. "People were refusing to give them money. Now after these killings people fear, so they are giving money again. I know if I refuse they will cut my head."

In a front-page editorial, the Kenyan daily newspaper The Standard said the killings were some of the worst in the country for more than a decade. But the newspaper, Kenya's oldest, warned the police not to "crash their way into homes and houses at night and shoot and kill innocent people under the blanket guise of fighting Mungiki". The recent wave of violence has been linked by political commentators to the elections coming up in December, with some politicians paying gangs to cause trouble in an attempt to hold on to their seats. During the 2005 referendum on a new constitution, nine people were killed. The Mungiki is believed to have links to Kenyan politicians. Several politicians, including two current MPs, were arrested last month after the first wave of beheadings.

The Mungiki

The Mungiki is a sect whose members are drawn from Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu. The word comes from the Kikuyu for "multitude". They emerged in the 1990s and claimed to be inspired by the Mau Mau rebellion, which rose up against British colonial rule in the 1950s. Like the Mau Mau, Mungiki members traditionally wear dreadlocks to symbolise their opposition to imperialism. But in recent years they have begun to shave their heads enabling them to blend in with other Kikuyus.

Police say that what began as a quasi-religious movement has degenerated into an organised crime syndicate, similar to the Italian Mafia, running protection and prostitution rackets. The sect enforces female circumcision. Sect members pray facing Mt Kenya, which the Kikuyu believe to be the home of their supreme deity. The sect was outlawed five years ago after at least 20 people were killed in fighting between it and another gang called the Taliban, whose members come from the Luo tribe of western Kenya.