Kenyan land 'invaders' arrested

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Kenyan police have arrested 12 people for invading land, days after President Mwai Kibaki promised to redistribute absentee landlords' property.

The invasions and arrests took place in Coastal province, which the president visited last week.

The land minister says landless people must wait for the government's reform programme rather than seizing land.

The land question is a particular problem in the province, where half of the 4m residents are squatters.

The government has already handed out 30,000 title deeds to previously landless people in the province, the BBC's Odhiambo Joseph reports from Mombasa.

'Incitement'

Mombasa District Commissioner Mohamed Maalim said police were looking for people who incited the invasions.

"We have arrested the culprits who are behind the invasion, but members of the public have definitely been incited," Mr Maalim said, quoted by AFP news agency.

But Sheikh Juma Ngao, Mombasa chairman of the Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims, defended the invasions.

"They are suffering with landlessness, with poverty since 1963," he told our correspondent.

"Even God I think is very happy with this action."

The government has said it will invoke the compulsory acquisition clause in the Lands Act to repossess land given out to foreigners and companies in the 1920s by the colonial government, and distribute it to the coastal people immediately.

Successive governments have promised to solve this thorny issue, which has persisted for almost 43 years since independence.