Eight Kenyan police officers have been suspended over suspicions they helped a suspected serial killer escape from custody, police said.
In July, police said Collins Jumaisi Khalusha had confessed to the murders of 42 women, including his wife, since 2022.
Mr Khalusha’s lawyer denied the charges, saying his client had been tortured to extract a confession.
He had been held in a police station since his arrest in July, but police said on Tuesday that Mr Khalusha and 12 others escaped after being “assisted by insiders”.
An incident report from the police station said police discovered the detainees missing at 5 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) while officers were serving breakfast.
The 13 individuals escaped by cutting through a wire mesh roof and scaling a perimeter wall, the report added.
The 12 individuals who fled alongside Mr Khalusha were Eritrean nationals detained for entering the country illegally, police said.
Eight officers serving at the time have been suspended while investigations continue, police added.
Mr Khalusha, 33, was arrested after nine mutilated bodies were found in an abandoned quarry in the capital, Nairobi.
The victims were aged between 18 and 30 and were all killed in the same manner, police said.
Their murders sparked outrage and shock, with many wondering how police failed to notice that bodies had been dumped in a quarry about 100 metres from a police station.
They also questioned how 42 people could have been murdered in the space of two years without the police noticing – and how, after not suspecting anything for so long, the police were able to make an arrest within three days of the bodies being found in the quarry.
Kenya’s police watchdog has also expressed some skepticism. The Independent Police Oversight Authority has launched an investigation into whether the police themselves were linked to the killings, following “numerous allegations that the police were involved in unlawful arrests (and) abductions.”
Its findings have not yet been made public.
Kenyan police have been accused of numerous human rights abuses in the past – and the force is currently under investigation over the deaths and subsequent abductions recent anti-government protests.
At the time of Mr Khalusha’s arrest, the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Mohamed Amin, said: “It is clear that we are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life, who has no respect and no dignity.”
Mr Khalusha’s lawyer, John Maina Ndegwa, told the BBC in July: “He says he was strangled to confess. You could see he was distressed, terrified and anxious.”
The suspect appeared in a Nairobi court on Friday, and the magistrate ordered his detention for another 30 days so that police can complete their investigation, AFP news agency reported.
The discovery of the dismembered bodies came as the country was still reeling from The so-called Shakahola Forest massacrewhere more than 400 bodies were found in mass graves near the Indian Ocean coast.
Cult leader Paul Mackenzie allegedly encouraged his followers to starve themselves to “go see Jesus.”
He pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
