Hassan Omar: From rights defender to Ruto's hawkish ally
Politics
By
Standard Reporter
| May 27, 2026
From a fearless student leader, a human rights defender, a vocal debator in Parliament, to a hawkish praise singer, UDA Secretary General Hassan Omar has undergone full cycle.
The former member of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) was among student leaders who actively participated in the Ufungamano Initiative push for a new constitution.
A lawyer by profession, the man who is said to have also had a stint in the military, last week launched a tirade against those he described as land grabbers from the Mt Kenya region, asking them to “return the coconut (land)" or coast people would reclaim it.
Omar linked the Kenyatta family and the Kikuyu community to what he described as historical dominance of the country’s economy and political power.
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The comments, made in presence of President William Ruto, raised anger even among the President's supporters. Retired President Uhuru Kenyatta termed Omar’s remarks a reckless warning that such ethnic profiling stoked the 2007/2008 ethnic violence that claimed more than 1,100 lives.
Although Omar has since apologised, claiming his remarks were taken out of context and that he did not intend to demean or target any community, his critics say the former Mombasa senator is fond of speaking impulsively without considering the consequences of his words.
Omar, who repeatedly claims that the late Prime Minister Raila Odinga was his political mentor, was in 1998 expelled from Moi University after he led students in a protest against the university’s name.
He did not complete his studies until 2003, when then President Mwai Kibaki issued amnesty for politically expelled students to return.
Even then, Omar joined the Supreme Preachers of Kenyan Muslims, where he continued with his anti-Kanu protests across the country.
His allies say that after the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education at Lenana School, Omar had a brief stint at the Kenya Air Force as a cadet officer. He reportedly served for less than a year.
It is on record that before he joined Ruto, he was accused of doctoring the witness statements against the current president at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the 2007/2008 killings when was at KNCHR.
Two witnesses housed by the commission, Ken Wekesa and William Rono, publicly claimed that Omar bribed them and promised to relocate them abroad if they falsified testified against Ruto.
In 2010, Ruto, then Eldoret North MP, alleged Omar worked with political collaborators to recruit, coach, and pay witnesses to falsely testify against him.
Omar has, however, denied the allegations. KNCHR admitted housing ICC witnesses but also denied allegations of bribes and coaching of witnesses. There were claims some witnesses were compromised by the suspects.
In 2011, Omar was grilled for eight hours over an article he wrote titled "What do Kibaki men know or what are they planning?”
The article was also said to be ethnically profiling the Kikuyu tribe. Former CS Moses Kuria, then a PNU strategist, wrote to NCIC to complain that the article was alarming.