Kenya: cleansing service planned at former house of torture

Religious leaders in Kenya are planning to perform a cleansing ceremony at a building in the capital, Nairobi, where secret torture chambers were opened to the public in February. Leaders of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian churches said they needed to spiritually purge Nyayo House, a 24-storey building in the city centre, of the acts of cruelty practised under its roof in the 1980s and 1990s. The cleansing ceremony is scheduled for this Sunday, March 23, 2003. Hundreds of people - including university students and lecturers, artists, politicians and journalists - are believed to have been interrogated and tortured in 12 tiny cells in the basement of the building. These atrocities were carried out in the 1980s, during the reign of Kenya's previous government that was voted out in December 2002. Source: CISA