Cry for justice: Inside the shift in Kenya's prosecution of protesters

As Kenya marks the second year since the June 25, 2024, anti-Finance Bill protests this week, a review of court records reveals a dramatic shift in the charges brought against demonstrators, raising fresh questions about the line between maintaining public order and protecting constitutional freedoms.

What began as arrests for unlawful assembly, creating a disturbance and malicious property damage has, in several cases, evolved into prosecutions for terrorism, arson, organised criminal activity and conspiracy-related offences.

The shift has thrust the courts into a growing debate over whether the State has crossed the line between safeguarding national security and criminalising dissent, amid scrutiny of the government’s response to the Gen Z-led protests that shook the country and led President William Ruto to withdraw the controversial Finance Bill.  

In the immediate aftermath of the June 2024 demonstrations, most protesters arrested across Nairobi, Eldoret, Nakuru, Kisumu, Mombasa and other towns faced relatively common public-order offences.

Court records and rights-group reporting from that period show many were charged with unlawful assembly, breach of peace, creating a disturbance, malicious property damage, stealing and handling suspected stolen goods.

In some instances, courts later released the suspects after prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence to sustain the charges.

However, following the June 25, 2025, anniversary protests and the July 7 Saba Saba demonstrations, investigators began pursuing significantly heavier charges against dozens of suspects accused of attacks on government facilities and public infrastructure.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) announced that hundreds of suspects had been arrested following the nationwide protests, with charges ranging from arson and robbery with violence to terrorism-related offences.

The decision to invoke anti-terrorism legislation marked a significant departure from the public-order offences that had characterised most protest-related prosecutions in 2024.

Yet government agencies maintained that some individuals had infiltrated protests and engaged in organised criminal activity, arguing that destruction of property, attacks on police stations and government facilities went beyond peaceful demonstrations.

Amnesty International’s annual review records that the Saba Saba protests alone, which spread across more than 20 counties, left at least 38 people dead and more than 500 protesters facing criminal charges, including, for the first time at this scale, offences under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

At Kahawa Law Courts, 37 suspects accused of acts “committed under the guise of” the June 25 protests were arraigned together: 25 picked up in Kikuyu town, Kiambu County, and 10 in Matuu, Machakos County.

Detectives named two alleged ringleaders, Sarah Wanjiku Thiga and Peter Kinyanjui Wanjiru, said to go by the alias “Kawanjiru,” as masterminds operating between Kiambu and Ruiru.

According to investigators, the suspects were linked to attacks on public institutions and government facilities during the protests.

By late July 2025, the Interior Ministry put the number of those charged under terrorism-related provisions at 71.

In Matuu, 21-year-old Veronicah Mbindyo was arrested after the June 2025 anniversary protests and informed she was being charged with terrorism, a designation that has upended her life, given that her alleged offence centred on posting a protest video online.

In Machakos County, activist Boniface Mwangi was arrested at his Lukenya home over claims he had facilitated terrorism linked to the June 25 unrest. When he appeared at Kahawa Law Courts, the State had downgraded the charge to two counts of possessing ammunition without a firearm certificate, after items recovered from his office turned out to be a spent teargas canister and a blank round.

He was later released on bail.

The contrast with how courts have handled other, more recent rounds of street unrest is instructive.

Earlier this year, a Nakuru court fined 30 protesters Sh2,000 each after they pleaded guilty to obstructing traffic during demonstrations over fuel prices, a sentence that, whatever the circumstances, sits worlds apart from the multi-year remand risk attached to a terrorism count.

Judicial responses to the terrorism files have themselves been mixed, and that record matters as much as the charges.

At Kibera, Chief Magistrate Irene Kahuya rejected a police bid to detain a group of suspects for 21 more days and instead released three on cash bail of Sh200,000 each, ordering them to report to Central Police Station twice weekly while investigations continued.

The use of terrorism charges has drawn strong criticism from human rights defenders and lawyers who argue that while criminal acts committed during protests must be prosecuted, terrorism laws should not be used as a substitute for ordinary criminal offences.

Former Chief Justice David Maraga, who has led a defence team into court on behalf of arrested youths, has always criticised what he termed the misuse of anti-terrorism laws.

“The reckless use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and ATPU is a violation of Kenyans’ freedoms of assembly, expression and the right to bail,” Maraga stated.

Former Law Society of Kenya president Eric Theuri also warned against expanding the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

He argued that offences involving destruction of property, killings and other criminal conduct were already covered under existing laws.

“Acts of terrorism, including destruction of property, killings and all other ingredients of that charge, are already captured elsewhere in Kenyan criminal law,” Theuri said.

Faith Odhiambo, another former LSK president, maintains that protesters should only face terrorism charges where there is clear evidence of terrorist intent.

“Protesters should not be charged with terrorism unless there is clear evidence of terrorist intent,” she said.