One dies in police raid on campus

One student has died and others were injured as Kenyan riot police intercepted 400 students at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

The students had stormed the offices of a leading newspaper that had alleged that the university was a haven for drug dealing.

The Daily Nation story claimed that hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and mandrax were easily available at the campus halls of residence. It also said that locally distilled illegal spirits and other brews were freely on sale.

One student died after falling from a commandeered truck. The students took over university buses and trucks to drive the 40km to Nairobi city centre, chanting slogans against the paper.

They chased newspaper vendors and overturned kiosks on their way to the Daily Nation offices. They also lit fires and smashed cars owned by newspaper workers before ransacking the sales department.

The students also raided a section of a bank in the same building, smashing computers and ripping telephones out of walls as workers ran for safety. Attempts to set the building on fire were thwarted by employees, who braved a hail of stones and retaliated with jets of water from fire equipment. Property worth millions of shillings was destroyed.

Ratemo Michieka, the university's vice-chancellor, blamed the newspaper for the trouble, saying its article had misrepresented the situation.

"Drug abuse is everywhere, in the workplace, on the street and even at home, but if drug abuse is as rampant in the university as the Daily Nation would like us to believe, then we would not be graduating any students," said Professor Michieka.

Wilfred Kiboro, chief executive of the Nation Media Group, said the attack was unwarranted and that the students could have channelled their grievances properly. "Instead, they behaved like thugs and possibly they were under the influence of drugs," he said.

He also criticised the police for not acting swiftly, although the city's main police station was less than a mile away. Some of the newspaper's journalists claimed they saw police enjoying the spectacle from a distance.

"No doubt there was complicity between the university authorities, the city police and students in the attack on the newspaper offices for highlighting in an unflattering manner scandals involving some of the powerful people in government," an editorial said.