The rights organisation called on soldiers to disobey orders to torture or kill suspects.

And it urged the United Nations to suspend Kenya's participation in peacekeeping operations.

The UN Web site says Kenya is the sixth largest troop-contributing nation, with 1 874 soldiers serving in nine countries.

"There has been a massive onslaught on our democracy by the security forces," said Hassan Omar Hassan, a member of the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights.

"We have made it right to kill."

The commission recommended that the defence minister, the army commander, the defence chief of general staff, the police commissioner, a provincial administrator and three others in the intelligence service, army and police be charged for alleged crimes committed by the armed forces in Mount Elgon region.

It said it sent those recommendations to the attorney general, who should decide on specific charges.

If they are not satisfied with the attorney general's response, the commission could go to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Hassan said.

There was no immediate response from the government or defence officials.

But they have said previously that those who were tortured and killed were militia members subjected to vigilante justice by outraged citizens.

The Commission's report, however, included detailed interviews with several victims who said they were tortured by soldiers.

Among them were a man who lost an eye in a beating, a woman who had ground chili pepper forced into her genitals, and a man with a bullet lodged in his face.

Many people said soldiers forced them to crawl through barbed wire cages while beating them for hours.

The accounts were accompanied by medical reports and graphic photographs.

The commission said the mortuary at Mt Elgon is full of rotting bodies because families are too afraid to collect them.

It said some people who testified to the commission have been arrested or have disappeared.

Because the military has closed off swaths of land and refused the commission access to detention centres, it was impossible to count the victims, the report said.

But it estimated that scores were killed and thousands tortured.

The victims were arrested in a military crackdown that started in March on the banned Saboat Land Defence Force, which claims to fight for a fairer distribution of land for the Saboat, a clan of the Kalenjin tribe.

But for years, the Saboat Land Defence Force has terrorised Mt.

Elgon residents.

It is notorious for killing and mutilating its victims.

Like most land conflicts in Kenya, tension in Mt Elgon dates to Kenya's independence in 1963, when many descendants of British colonisers sold their farms to the government.

Farms in the Kenyan Highlands, including Mt Elgon, were grabbed by political bigwigs, and thousands of the original inhabitants were forced to resettle elsewhere in the country.

This mass displacement of people sowed the seeds of resentment that frequently erupts, even today, into ethnic clashes over land.

Similar violence exploded after disputed December 27 presidential election; more than 1 000 people were killed.

The Mt.

Elgon crackdown came after militia members burned or hacked 13 people to death in a single attack.

At first, many locals welcomed the armed forces.

But they and human rights officials say government forces have been indiscriminately arresting, torturing and sometimes killing anyone of an age to be a militia member.

Nampa-AP

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