Activists' slayings prompt call for probe

NAIROBI, Kenya, March 7 (UPI) -- The slayings of two Kenyan human rights activists have drawn a call by Prime Minister Raila Odinga for an independent investigation.

Odinga said Friday the execution-style killings of Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu are evidence Kenyans are being terrorized by police whose duty it is to keep order, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

"I fear that we are flirting with lawlessness in the name of keeping law and order," Odinga said. "In the process, we are hurtling toward failure as a state."

The newspaper said the two activists had been campaigning against illegal killings by police. They had cooperated in a wide-ranging United Nations investigation into the subject, which included a probe of police killings of opposition demonstrators after a disputed 2007 presidential election.

"Any objective observer has to conclude that the police would be prime suspects," Philip Alston, a U.N. official who monitors extrajudicial killings, told the Post. "I hope that's not the case, but the only way to show that is with an independent investigation."