NAIROBI, Oct 4 (AFP) - Two top officials of a Kenyan jail where five inmates were allegedly beaten to death last week were suspended Monday, when it emerged that another nine prisoners from the same jail had died in hospital over the last week.
National Prisons Commissioner Abraham Kamakil announced he had suspended Silas M'tambu, the officer in charge of Meru prison in eastern Kenya, and his deputy, Benedict Mutunga, on compulsory leave to allow "further and thorough investigations to be carried out."
While Kamakil's statement referred to the "deaths of five inmates at Meru prison," the head of the state-run Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Khelef Khalifa, told AFP that other inmates from the same jail had recently died in hospital.
"Nine other prisoners have died and we are waiting for post-mortem results," he added, saying that some showed visible signs of having been beaten.
Autopsies of the five prisoners who died in the jail revealed bone fractures, an indication that they were beaten, according to the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), a non-governmental watchdog which sent a pathologist to the autopsies on Sunday.
"Our pathologist discovered that the men died of multiple tissue injuries, which are caused by blunt trauma," IMLU Director Kakai Kissinger told AFP by phone.
The official government pathologist could not be reached for comment Monday.
On the night of their deaths, the five were allegedly beaten for refusing to enter a tiny cell -- measuring six by three feet (1.80 metres by 90 centimetres) -- which was already crammed with a dozen prisoners.
Further beatings by fellow inmates allegedly took place inside the cell, amid a frenzied struggle for air.
Built to house about 500 prisoners, Mero jail currently has about 1,400.
In 2000, a Kenyan magistrate ordered a probe into the east African country's most notorious prison murder, when warders killed six death row inmates in King'ong'o prison in central Kenya, later claiming falsely that the victims had tried to escape.