By Daniel Ooko

    NAIROBI, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Kenyan government has dismissed a UN report which accused the country's security forces of widespread extra judicial killings, and called for the removal of the east African nation's police commissioner and its attorney general.

    The report released in Nairobi on Wednesday by the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Philip Alston concluded that death squads were set up upon the orders of senior police officials to exterminate the Mungiki, an underground religious sect reported by media to be responsible for a range of criminality in the capital, Nairobi.

    Alston, a Professor of Law at New York University who reports to the UN Human Rights Council in an independent, unpaid capacity, concluded that police killings "are committed at will and with utter impunity," after travelling the country and conducting interviews with over 100 victims and witnesses.

    But the Kenyan government rejected the UN Special Rapporteur's findings in a statement received here Thursday.

    "The government finds it inconceivable that someone who has been in the country for less than ten days can purport to have conducted comprehensive and accurate research on such a serious matter, as to arrive at the recommendations he made," government spokesman Alfred Matua said.

    He said the government was concerned Alston made "such far-reaching conclusions and recommendations on the basis of his interim report" and the findings were released without government response.

    Mutua said Alston did not meet the required international standards in releasing his report, which among other things, calls for the sacking of Police Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali.

    "The government rejects the findings and recommendations made in a press statement made by the UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Philip Alston," he said.

    The government, Mutua said, is further concerned that such a report had been released without having sought a government response in accordance to the principles of natural justice, and international practice.

    He said the preliminary report by Alston had gone beyond his mandate, "does not encourage dialogue and appears to have been made in bad faith almost impinging on matters of sovereignty, especially as it relates to executive prerogative to appoint."

    Alston is in the country at the invitation of the government to investigate the alleged extra-judicial killings by security forces and has visited various parts of the country where he held a series of meetings with witnesses and affected families.

    He said he had also met top government officials including Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, legislators and the top leadership in the security departments.

    The UN special envoy said he also found compelling evidence that the police and military committed organized torture and extra judicial executions against civilians during a 2008 operation to flush out a militia known as the Sabaot Land Defense Force (SLDF).

    "For two years, the SLDF militia terrorized the population and the Government did far too little. And when the government did finally act, they responded with their own form of terror and brutality, killing over 200 people," he said, advocating for an independent investigation.

    With respect to accountability for violence that followed disputed elections at the beginning of 2008, the Special Rapporteur stated that the Special Tribunal for Kenya was "absolutely indispensable to ensure that Kenya does not again descend into chaos during the 2012 elections."

    Police killings during the post-election violence in January 2008 and a counter-insurgency campaign in western Kenya a few months later have been well documented and heavily criticized by human rights organizations.

    Alston called on civil society and the international community to take a firm stand on the tribunal's establishment, adding that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should take up the case concurrently, on a parallel track.

    Among other recommendations, Alston called for the establishment of a civilian police oversight body, the centralization of records of police killings, and the payment of compensation for the victims of those unlawfully killed.

    The police may kill for personal reasons, for extortion or for ransom, Alston said. He added, "Often they kill in the name of crime control, but in circumstances where they could readily make an arrest.

    He cited as an example James Ng'ang'a Kariuki Muiruri, 29, whom he said police shot and killed last month in the capital, Nairobi.

    "After a disagreement at a hotel, a police officer stopped the car James and his brother were in, and ordered James to handcuff himself. When he asked why he was being arrested, James was shot three times," Alston said.

    "The only exceptional things about the case were that James was the son of a former Member of Parliament, and the incident had been witnessed," he said.