KENYA: 6,000 CONVICTS AWAITING DEATH

With 6,000 death row convicts, Kenya has the fourth largest death row population in the world. In the last five years alone, Kenyan courts have sentenced 1,620 prisoners to death.
When Kirugumi wa Wanjuki (the last man to be hanged in Kenya) died in 2009, he left behind over 4,000 death row inmates waiting to be executed. Later that year, condemned prisoners breathed a collective sigh of relief when President Mwai Kibaki commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment. Five years down the line, Kenyan courts have sentenced close to 2,000 more suspects to death. “The numbers sentenced to death are so high that it’s now a catastrophe to have so many people waiting to be hanged,” says Dennis Kiio, programmes manager with the Legal Resources Foundation, an organisation dedicated to criminal cases.