Around 100 Kenyan lawyers protested on Tuesday against the abduction of one of their own in Nairobi last week — the latest disappearance to spark outrage in the East African nation.
Amnesty International said the weapons and tactical equipment in the footage were “police-grade”, raising “serious concerns about the circumstances surrounding his disappearance and the possible involvement of security personnel.”
Kenyan police have denied holding the lawyer.
Abdi had been representing a businessman in a fraud case, who then filed a complaint against the security services for threatening him.
The lawyer subsequently filed his own complaint, saying he, too, had received threats from security services.
“The state agents or agencies that were after him included the Anti-Terror Police Unit and the National Intelligence Service. We have reason to believe that the same agencies are involved in the abduction,” Charles Kanjama, Law Society of Kenya (LSK) president, told AFP.
He said it had been a decade since a lawyer was last abducted in Kenya, adding that the country risks “becoming an abductor’s paradise”.
Kenya saw a spate of abductions targeting critics of the government in the wake of mass protests in 2024, and several high-profile dissidents from neighbouring countries have been kidnapped in Kenya while seeking refuge there.
“Enough is enough. Kenya has to give good example to the neighbours… It is impunity and lawlessness,” Kanjama said.
Amnesty International says there have been at least 22 abductions in Kenya this year.
Around 100 lawyers and rights defenders marched to the Supreme Court in Nairobi to protest the latest kidnapping, following a habeas corpus hearing at the Milimani Law Courts, demanding that Abdi’s whereabouts be revealed.
