The information requested included the particular dates and times when the deceased persons were killed; whether they were killed by the Kenya Army Personnel, the Kenya Police or 1982 Airforce personnel; and the names of the specific officers responsible for the deaths of the deceased.

Khamis Adan Mumin, Ibrahim's father, worked for Wajir County Council until his death; Yussuf Mohamed Hussein was a civil servant in the Ministry of Health. The two were among 55 or so employees of various government agencies who disappeared from work in early February 1984, never to be seen again. Their employers reported them as having deserted their duties and their families could not access their terminal benefits.

The question of who killed these two men and more than three thousand others was raised in parliament by the former Member of Parliament for Wajir West, the late Ahmed Khalif Mohamed, on 21 March 1984. During a debate on President Moi's speech at the opening of that parliamentary session, Khalif accused the security forces of killing hundreds in Wajir District. The government forces, he said, had placed more than 4000 people in a concentration camp, over 300 had been immediately executed, and over 600 were confirmed missing.

Khalif directly accused the PC for North Eastern Province, Benson Kaaria, and the Somalia government of collusion in the murder. Kaaria had claimed, as reported by the Standard on November 9, 1980, that he would eliminate all Somali-speaking people in the country unless they exposed shifta who had killed a District Officer. Khalif's accusations were met with utmost hostility by the entire parliament.

Mwai Kibaki, Kenneth Matiba, A. Y. Boru and Samuel Ng'eny demanded substantiation. Charles Muthura accused Khalif of irrelevance in his contribution to the presidential speech while Parmenas Munyasia jestingly demanded to know the names of those who threatened to wipe out the Somalis. Khalif was cornered into dropping the Somalia claim but stood his ground on the mass killings of Somalis in Wajir. In a bid to substantiate his claim the late MP tabled the lists of massacre victims and their photographs in parliament on 28 March 1984; many on the list were civil servants, including Noor Haji, the former Senator from Wajir, who had been killed in the military operation.

The question of just what happened at Wagalla Airstrip between 10 and 14 February 1984 was partially answered by the late Justus Ole Tipis in a ministerial statement about the military operation, read on the floor of parliament on the night of 12 April 1984, and reported in the Daily Nation of April 13 1985. Ole Tipis revealed that the security situation in Wajir was politically motivated, and that leaders were involved in divisive strategies planned along ethnic considerations. He claimed that the government decided to carry out its operations against the Degodia community in order to provide security to a neighbouring clan. Ole Tipis gave an accurate account of the operations but avoided mention of the resulting genocide.

The Wajir District Security Committee and the Provincial Security Committee were convened by an order from the National Security Council. The meeting took place on 8 February 1984 at the DC's office, Wajir. The District Commissioner himself was conveniently replaced by a District Officer, M. M. Tiema.

According to the signatures in the visitors book at the DC's office, and eyewitness reports, this meeting was attended by J.S. Mathenge, Permanent Secretary Office of the President; B. A. Kiplagat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; David Mwiraria, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs; John Gituma, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; Brigadier J. R. Kibwana, Department of Defence; B. N. Macharia of the Treasury; Z. J. M. Kamencu, Deputy Secretary in the Office of the President; J. P.Gitui, D.C.O Police Headquarters; J. K. Kaguthi and J. P. Mwagovya of the Office of the President; C. M. Aswani, Provincial Police Officer, North Eastern Province; Lt. Col. H. F. K. Muhindi of 7KR; J. K. Kinyanjui, director of Land Adjudication Nairobi; and finally Benson N. Kaaria Provincial Commissioner, North Eastern Province.

The meeting resolved to carry out an operation with the objectives of disarming the Degodia and forcing them to provide the names of bandits who were committing crimes in the district.

Once the operation was authorised, it began in earnest on 10 February at 0400 and involved the Police, the Administration Police and the Army. The operation covered Elben, Dambas, Butelehu, Eldas, Griftu and Bulla Jogoo. According to the government statement, most of these areas had been swept by February 11 .

When the army surrounded Bulla Jogoo, they ordered the residents to vacate their homes. According to Ole Tipis, the residents refused to comply with the order; the military then forcibly removed 381 male members of the Degodia clan from their homes and took them to Wagalla Airstrip, 9 miles West of Wajir Town. Ole Tipis admitted that those held were interrogated for three days and a scuffle erupted when the District Commissioner accompanied by the OCPD entered the airstrip.

Some of the crowds started to escape while others shouted at government officers. In this confusion and stampede, 29 people died of gunshots or were trampled upon, while 28 others were killed when the army met with resistance during the operations, according to the ministerial statement.

The official story given by the government was close to what happened, save that the government minimised the operation's callousness. The operation covered all of Wajir District including Tarbaj, Leheley, Wajir-Bor and Khorof Harar. The target community were the Degodia but it is believed a number of Somalis of other extraction were caught up in cases of mistaken identity. The operation targeted male members of the clan above 12 years of age but women were raped, houses were burnt and property was looted in every locality where the operation took place.

The men rounded up were subjected to torture in an effort to force them to confess to owning a rifle. Some died of their wounds before they reached Wagalla Airstrip. Those who reached the airstrip were sorted into sub-clans and up to 30 members of Jebrail sub-clan were burnt alive in an orgy of unprecedented violence. Their clothes were piled on top of them, petrol or some other highly flammable chemical was sprinkled on the clothes, and a bonfire whose fuel was human flesh was created. The other detainees watched as their colleagues were roasted alive.

The rest of the men were forced to strip naked and told to squat in the hot sun - those who resisted were shot. The late Ahmed Khalif reported that the detainees were held at the airstrip for five days; that they were denied food and water; and that during this period those who tried to pray were shot. In those five days, more than 1000 people starved to death, shot for questioning the orders of the forces, or died at the hands of gangs which were allowed into the airstrip at night to carry out revenge against those whom they held a grudge.

On the fifth day the remaining men bolted, broke the barbed wire fence and ran for their lives. The military opened fire and hundreds were shot - many in the back - and killed. The stampede helped most escape into the bushes where they received needed help from nomads in the bushes. It was an escape that should have come on the first couple of days before so many were murdered, but without it the Degodia people would have been wiped off the map.

The military found itself amid thousands of dead and injured men. The plan had gone awry: men had escaped and told others what happened. The military attempted a massive cover-up that involved piling the dead and injured into lorries and dumping them in the bushes; many bodies were also disposed of by fire and acids. A rescue attempt by the current Minister for Northern Kenya and Arid Lands, Mohamed Ibrahim Elmi, Catholic nun Annalena Tonelli, businessman Noor Unug and others saved many people who were ferried into various parts of Wajir district by the armed forces.

That is how Wagalla Massacre took place. The survivors' stories are almost unbelievable.

One survivor says that he had never stepped into Wajir town before Februray 9, 1984. He decided to visit his father there; they were both picked up by the military the night he arrived and he found himself at Wagalla naked, hungry and thirsty and watching as life ebbed out of his father. Another survivor woke up in a pile of bodies in a depression in a bush; next to his 16 year old cousin's corpse - just an innocent boy shot at back of the head. One survivor escaped in the stampede naked and found a young girl herding goats who helped him cover his shame with her scarf.

It has been exactly a quarter of a century since the Wagalla Massacre. In these years the victims have refused to stay quiet, the dead are bursting out of their graves and giving clues to those who wish to resolve the massacre. The available evidence is sufficient to recreate what happened at Wagalla.

It is still possible to give State Council M. Ole Keiwua the specific information he requested, in order to allow Ibrahim and Alinoor to prosecute those who killed their fathers, Yussuf Mohamed Hussein and Khamis Adan Mumin, along with 3000 others - this is the figure given in the UN report - on the 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 February 1984 by a combined contingent of security officers from the Kenya Army, the 82 Airforce, the Kenya Police and the Administration Police. (The larger casualty figures were also mentioned to the author by Ahmed Khalif while he was still alive.)

The officers who killed received an order from their superiors who met at Wajir District Commissioner's Office on 8 February 1984. Information of this kind could not be given by the sons of the deceased. The same information cannot be given now in a Kenyan court. The judiciary in Kenya has refused to hear the case because evidence will be adduced unfavourable to the current establishment.

The Kenya government has therefore decided to form a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) which will have powers to summon evidence and give amnesty to those who are truthful. The idea of the TJRC is that the perpetrators of past injustice have been defeated and fear has arisen of the victims exacting revenge on past oppressors.

It is a way of creating a semblance of justice for victims of past crimes who now wield power to harm others. TJRC is a tool of reconciling the society at large and it is those who suffered in the past who create this tool to clear revenge from their conscience.

The Wagalla Massacre victims are still victims; they have not acquired any power to harm those who carried out such genocide against their people. The only thing that might satisfy their urge for justice is a genocide court established on Kenyan soil, but administered by international jurists, where the perpetrators can face justice and the community can demand reparations. The other alternative is a revolution that replaces the current order giving all Kenyans who suffered under the governments of Presidents Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki a chance to dictate how and who should govern them.

A TJRC can then be mooted to give amnesty to the junior officers who did the footwork but the main perpetrators of impunity in this country need to be punished for their victims to feel safe.