Days before Kenya’s general elections in July 2017, the bodies of Chris Msando, the official in charge of the country’s computerized voting system, and his companion Carol Ngumbu were found on the outskirts of Nairobi two days after they went missing. They had been strangled to death. “There was no doubt he was tortured and murdered,” said Wafula Chebukati, chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), at the time.
The Kenyan police arrested three people while tracing Msando’s last movements, but none ever appeared in court. Raila Odinga, one of the leading presidential candidates, alleged that Msando had been killed because he refused to hand over a password that was later used to rig the elections. Odinga said that the IEBC’s IT system had been hacked and the results altered. While the commission acknowledged that there had been a hacking attempt, it said the attempt had failed.
