The late former President Daniel Arap Moi is behind the idea of the building’s name. You could probably find yourself here should you oppose his government.
James Opiyo was the ‘torturer-in-chief’ at Nairobi’s Nyayo House torture chambers where men with parental hair on their chests wept for mercy.
He was the most dreaded officer.
Opiyo, a staunch SDA, was in charge.
Reports have it that Opiyo was trained by America’s CIA on the best torture methods.
That included use of demeaning words: “Even if you die you are just a bitch!” he once told Mtumishi Njeru Kathangu, former Runyenjes MP.
Before his retirement in April 1999, the now ailing Opiyo who hates the media with a passion, was Deputy Commissioner of Police.
He headed a unit within the Nairobi Provincial Intelligence Services, which fell under the dreaded Special Branch- which was tasked with extracting information from suspected members of Mwakenya and other underground movements in Kenya.
Anyone deemed an enemy of the Kanu regime in the 1980s and 1990s, including politicians, scholars, university students, lawyers, journalists, civil servants, workers and peasants, had a painful rendezvous with Opiyo.
In We Lived to Tell: The Nyayo House Story, over 200 victims fingered him as their number one tormentor who escaped to Tanzania when KANU lost power in 2002, but returned later.
Despite courts awarding torture victims millions of shillings from the government, James Opiyo leads the life of a recluse in Ranen, Rongo Constituency, Migori County, and has never been charged with torture or gross violation of human rights.
