Kenyan election IT head Chris Msando found dead
The man in charge of Kenya's computerised voting system has been found dead just days before the 8 August elections.
Chris Msando, an electoral commission IT manager, had gone missing on Friday.
"There was no doubt he was tortured and murdered," said IEBC chairperson Wafula Chebukati.
Tension
is high as the presidential election is expected to be a close race
between incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta and long-time opponent Raila Odinga.
Police said on Monday that the bodies of Mr Msando and an unidentified
woman had been found in the Kikuyu area on the outskirts of Nairobi and
taken to the city mortuary.
Kenyan newspaper The Star reports that Mr Msando's body was found with one arm missing.
Shock and disgust
Dickens Olewe, BBC News, Nairobi
Today
was supposed to big a day for Chris Msando - he was to oversee the
public testing of the voting system which has been vaunted by the
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as key to
eliminate vote rigging and to deliver a credible election.
The Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS) will be used to identify voters and transmit results.
A
similar electronic system that was used in the 2013 election failed
spectacularly, leading to manual counting of votes which some have
argued allowed for voter manipulation.
Mr Msando had only been on
the job for two months, having taken over after his predecessor was
suspended for refusing to cooperate with an audit firm which was
cleaning the voters' register.
His death will do little to
assuage growing concerns about the IEBC's election preparedness and
questions about its credibility.
On Twitter, his name and
#RIPMsando are trending, with many expressing shock and disgust at what
to them looks like a targeted elimination.
This news also comes
at a time when the government has denied allegations by opposition
parties that it is planning to deploy the military to swing the election
to its favour.
With only a week to the election, this is no
doubt another testing time for Kenya and it can only emerge from this
tense moment by holding credible elections and arresting and prosecuting
Mr Msando's killers.
Some fear there could be violent clashes between rival supporters
after the result is announced, with the losers refusing to accept
defeat.
However, few expect the type of violence which killed more than 1,200 people in ethnic, post-election violence 10 years ago.
Following
the clashes, the International Criminal Court charged President
Kenyatta and his deputy with instigating violence, but the charges have
since been dropped due to a lack of evidence.
The government has denied ICC accusations that its witnesses had been intimidated to prevent them from testifying.
BBC
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