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The beheadings over the weekend in villages on
the outskirts of Nairobi came weeks after members of the Mungiki
sect fought with the police over control of minibus terminals, where
they have been extorting money from drivers.
"Seven people connected to the beheadings have
been arrested," said Eric Kiraithe, a spokesman for the national
police. "We are very keen to find any of those people associated
with Mungiki. It is an illegal association."
No charges have yet been filed against the
seven, who were rounded up along with more than 200 others, most of
whom were released, Kiraithe said.
Mungiki is believed to have thousands of
adherents, all drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe. Members
pray facing Mount Kenya, which the Kikuyu traditionally believed to
be the home of their supreme deity. The sect also has encouraged
respect for traditions like female genital mutilation and using
tobacco snuff.
Mungiki, whose name means "multitude" in the
Kikuyu language, was banned in 2002 after members killed more than
20 people in a Nairobi slum.
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 The latest attacks took place in Muranga, 38
miles north of the capital, and Kiambu, 25 miles outside the city.
Minibuses -- known as matatus -- are the main
form of public transport in Kenya. Mungiki members have fought with
minibus owners for years over control of the lucrative bus stops.
The violence has raised fears that Mungiki
members are out to disrupt the general elections in December, when
President Mwai Kibaki will seek a second term. Violent clashes have
broken out during election years in 1992, 1997 and 2002.
Mungiki "is out to demonstrate that it can
operate and strike with impunity anywhere and everywhere," the Daily
Nation newspaper said this week in a front-page editorial, below
pictures of four of the six men who were decapitated. "It is out to
show the police and other government organs are feeble, helpless and
unable to protect anyone who defies it."
[Text copied
from file received from AP
Digital; article by Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Associated Press
writer]
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