Kenyans on Thursday 2 March woke up to a shocking news of a brutal police raid on the standard media group premises in which the Kenya Television Network (KTN) was put off air, their newspaper printing plant disabled and tens of thousands of the days copies of newspapers burned. Right, the special edition of the 2 March Standard Newspaper reporting the police raid. (04-MAR-06)

This article is a collection of stories published in 2 and 3 March editions of the Kenyan newspapers The Standard and Nation Newspapers. The coverage has been edited and supplemented with interviews of eye witnesses by HRH / Martin O. Oluoch.

The attack was carried out at about 12.30 am  by an estimated 30  hooded  members of the police elite unit brandishing AK 47 assault rifles. The police raid follows a running dispute between the standard media house  and the government over a story  in the weeks  suday standard alleging that president Kibaki had held a secret meeting with one of his fiercest critic, former cabinet minister Mr. Kalonzo Musyoka. Three of the journalists were seized and held in police custody over the story for two day prior to the attack. The three have since been charged in court for publishing an alarming story.

Attack was swift and brutal
According to various eyewitnesses, the attack on the TV station was swift and brutal. The masked police attackers beat up those who attempted to resist their intrusion, frisked them and took away their mobile phones. During the orgy, the police seized computers, keyboards and electronic units controlling the security systems and slashed through electricity cables supplying electricity to the system.  Desktop computers containing hard disk which store all the information in the newsroom were also seized. They then disconnected power lines from the KTN studio taking the station off air.

Simultaneous attack
Across the city in industrial area, around 20 hooded policr attackers raided the media house’s printing unit, They fired three times  at the gate to bust open the gate before pushing there way inside the printing press, The shouted,  Laleni chini, sisi ni polisi ( lie down, we are policemen)  as they took over the premises. Anyone  who resited was pistol whipped before being forced to the floor. While press workers were being beaten to submission, another group of policemen broke into the offices where they disconnected computers telephones and faxes. Another group of police raiders were systematically walking through the printing press where they dismantled several parts disabling the printing equipment. The attackers then proceeded to set a blaze piles of the days newspapers that were just rolling ot of the press and were about to be dispatched to various parts of the country.