Justice Nicholas Ombija, passing the sentence, dismissed the warders' claims that the prisoners were shot dead as they tried to escape after scaling a perimeter wall.
He said that post-mortem reports indicated that blunt weapons were used in the brutal attack and that the bodies bore no gunshot wounds.
The death verdict comes hardly a month after newly-appointed Prisons Commissioner, Isaiah Osuga, dismissed senior commanders and five warders at Nairobi's Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, after the prison command mounted a brutal search for illegal mobile phones in the precints.
During the search on the death row convicts, the warders stripped them naked punched, kicked and whipped the prisoners.
They also scalded them, culminating in the death of an inmate.
The incident, recorded secretly on a handset camera phone by a sympathetic warder, and broadcast by local TV station, was strongly condemned by the government, civil society, the clergy and politicians, who all called for a swift and severe action against the warders.
Commissioner Osugo, a policeman-turned-prisons officer, has vowed to reform the Kenya Prisons Service.
Nairobi - 18/12/2008
Pana
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