kenya post-election deaths raise questions over police brutality

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters)-Six-month-
Old Samantha Pendo is sleeping with her mother, and police in the western city of Kisumu, Kenya, force wooden doors to open cracks, shoot with tear gas, beat choking babies with batons and say to her parents.
Samantha is in a coma now.
The couple said their experience ran counter to the government\'s statement, which said only robbers or thugs were killed or injured in the violence after last week\'s disputed election.
On Friday, the election commission announced that President Uhuru Kenyatta had won a second term of office 1-1. 4 million votes.
But the 72-year-old senior opposition leader, Raila Odinga, insisted that the results were false and he won the presidential election last week.
Odinga hasn\'t called for a protest yet, but he said he will announce his strategy on Tuesday.
Many Kenyans are concerned that the demonstrations could trigger another bloodshed, with some 1,200 people killed after the disputed vote.
Since the announcement of the results of the election, Odinga supporters have staged sporadic protests in Kisumu and his stronghold in the Nairobi slums.
Police denied that Odinga had accused security forces of deliberately beating and killing residents.
\"Our response is legitimate and proportionate,\" police chief Joseph Boinnet told Reuters . \".
\"We are investigating (the Pendo case).
No sensible policeman will beat a child.
These words are empty for Samantha\'s parents.
\"We are not thugs. we are not thieves.
We are just a family, \"said her father, Joseph abbania.
His hands and arms were swollen and scratched from the beating he said he had received after opening his door --
The air in the room was very tight.
The man in a police uniform pulled him outside, while others rushed in and beat Samantha and his wife Renze, who were lying on the family bed.
Abanja said his wife began to scream after the child was cheated, and the men panicked.
\"They started moving and said, \'Let\'s go, \'\" he said in an interview at the hospital on Sunday \'. \".
\"I was told to do first aid and I told him I didn\'t know first aid.
The police ignored his wife\'s request for a lift to the hospital.
It was only four hours until the family got help, and the doctor at the Aga Khan Hospital at Kisumu said it might have aggravated her injury.
The neighbors told Reuters that police were sweeping their neighbor Nyalenda for protesters.
\"I heard the screams next door and on my street, and then the banging,\" said owner Maurice Abania . \".
Four other residents of Nyalenda said police forcibly entered their homes and took cash or mobile phones.
Mary AWO, 36, said a policeman beat her and her teenage daughter with a stick earlier Saturday.
Her right thigh is still swollen.
\"The officer took my phone and 3,000 shillings ($30),” she said.
The aid group said on Monday that at least 177 injured people across the country have been treated by the Red Cross since the election, mainly because of assault with blunt objects.
The police are not always in charge;
Some victims said they were attacked by robbers.
The Kenyan Human Rights Commission said on Saturday that 24 people have died nationwide since Tuesday\'s polls, although the government has set the death toll at 10.
Reuters reporter saw that in order to disperse the crowd, police fired tear gas and guns many times, but most of the shots appeared to be blank, or fired in the air.
Odinga visited an 8-in Nairobi\'s Mathare slum on Sunday-year-
A little girl was shot by a stray bullet on the balcony on the third floor, and witnesses said police were shooting to disperse the protesters.
\"I saw another child running towards me and told me that my child was shot dead,\" her mother Moraa Nyarangi told Reuters . \".
\"She was bleeding heavily on the ground.
I can\'t do anything.
Boinnet said he was investigating.
\"If it is indeed a police officer, then the land law will apply.
\"So far, we have every reason to believe that this is a gunman,\" he said . \".
In the same slum, the police dragged 18-old-
His mother, Christine Lebo, said a student, Silus Lebo, came out of the bed and beat him.
\"There are about four police officers on both boys, and everyone beats them with batons,\" she said . \".
Two witnesses confirmed her statement.
The fight stopped, and her son could not stand up or speak.
He died on Sunday.
Kenyatta praised the police on Monday but called for restraint.
\"We thank them for the excellent work they have done, but we continue to encourage them to exercise restraint in performing their duties,\" he told reporters . \".