US pastor wants wife extradited to Kenya

An attempt by a US-based Kenyan preacher to have his wife who resides in South Carolina deported and restrained in Kenya has flopped.

This is after a Chief Magistrate’s court in Nakuru withdrew orders of extradition issued to the US Embassy just a day after issuing the order.

Samuel Kioko, a church pastor currently on a mission to South Carolina, wanted his wife, Jane Ruguru Kituku, who is facing criminal charges in the country, extradited and restrained by Kenya’s Immigration Department.

The two are also embroiled in a divorce case.

Kituku was charged with creating a disturbance at their Nakuru Estate home on August 6, 2014 by threatening to slash Leavan Omondi, a tenant, with a panga.

Kioko’s case was filed this year, over four months after she left for the United States.

Her Kenyan lawyer, Dominc Kimatta, however argued that the court had no jurisdiction to order for extradition and that the process was flawed.

Kimatta told the court that apart from jurisdiction, the charges against  Kituku were not serious to warrant extradition. He further argues that his client has not been served with the application.

The lawyer said the process of extradition can only be issued by a High Court to the Director of Public Prosecutions on behalf of the Inspector General of Police. Only then, he says, can the IG direct Interpol to serve the same order in a US court for execution.

During the proceedings, prosecutor Kingstone Oyier told Nakuru Chief Magistrate Joel Ngenoh to issue the order, arguing that  Kituku wanted to evade justice.

But Ngenoh quashed the orders a day later saying, “Couples must not let courts invade their bedrooms to solve marital disputes. They are common and arise all times.”

The couple cohabited for several years in Nakuru’s Kiamunyi area before wedding in 1995 at a local church in Machakos.

They led a Christian life but their marriage seems to have cracked in America, where they have lived for six years.

According to Pastor Kioko, in between 2008 to 2013, his wife became arrogant in church and would even quarrel with other leaders.

The couple’s wrangling is said to have led to a drop in the number of congregants in the US church by about 450.

But Miss Kituku, through Chase Campell, a paralegal team in the US, says it is her estranged husband who is to blame, after he started an extramarital affair with another woman in his church.

“He then became abusive and ejected me from our matrimonial home,” she states in an affidavit filed in an ongoing divorce case in Nakuru.