Two men convicted of attacking and robbing a pair of gay friends in Kenya have both received harsh sentences, the Guardian reports, a rare instance of justice meted out for crimes against LGBTQ+ people in the East African country.

A judge handed down sentences of 15 years in prison for robbery with violence at Milimani law courts in Nairobi on March 3.

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“This case encourages us,” said Njeri Gateru, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in Kenya.

The victims endured terrifying hours at the hands of the perpetrators as part of a violent scheme that advocates say reaches from organized gangs to the highest levels of law enforcement.

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In April 2023, Eric Anyango and his friend Joe Ochieng (not their real names) suffered hours of violence and verbal abuse after they traveled to the house of a man they met on Facebook. Soon after they arrived, three other men crashed through the door, they said.

A four-hour-long nightmare followed.

The young men in their 20’s were stripped, kicked, slapped, and beaten, called homophobic slurs, and blackmailed into getting friends and family to send their kidnappers hundreds of dollars through bank transfers. If they refused, the men recounted, they would be outed to their families and killed.

“I tried to resist, and I wanted to fight back,” Anyango said. “That’s when one of them took a knife, held it at me and said: ‘If you don’t cooperate now, I will stab you and throw you out the window.’”

After funds arrived in the blackmailers’ accounts, the men were released.

On the advice of a friend, Anyango contacted the human rights group Ishtar, and a rep accompanied them to a police station.

“Often, when you go to a police station, you are harassed and discriminated against. They tell you that you are not a normal citizen and they throw away your case,” said the Ishtar paralegal who handled the men’s case. But in this instance, police heard them out. Soon after, two of their attackers were arrested.

Gateru, with the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, says the men arrested were part of a larger criminal gang, which includes members of the police who regularly terrorized queer men in Nairobi. She claims there are several similar cartels operating throughout the country.

“We had so many files against them,” she said. “We’ve had cases where these two men were arrested for other cases and later released. This can now serve as a deterrent to other gang members who have seen that the law has finally caught up.”

Anyango and Ochieng say the ordeal will stay with them.

“I was emotionally and physically damaged,” said Ochieng. “I lost everything I was building for a better life in the future on a random date.”  

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