Court frees MPs Nanok, Ethuro

By Isaiah Lucheli

NAIROBI, KENYA: Two MPs from Turkana County who had been arraigned in court on charges of incitement over Baragoi Killing have been set free.

Turkana South MP Josephat Nanok who is also Forestry Assistant minister and his Turkana Central counterpart Ekwe Ethuro were released by a magistrate’s court in Nairobi after the charge sheet was found to be defective.

Chief Magistrate Kiarie Waweru told the MPs that they were free of any charges in the ruling that he delivered on Wednesday after the legislators had on Monday raised objections to the content of the charge sheet when they were first arraigned in court.

Lawyers representing the legislators Katwa Kigen, Jotham Aruwa and Tom Kajwang had objected to the charges preferred against the Nanok and Ethuro as contained in the charge sheet and sought the court to determine the matter before the legislators took plea.

The charge sheet had contained one count of incitement to violence and the details had verbatim quotes of statements that were allegedly made by the MPs but failed to indicate where the statement were made.

In his ruling Waweru said the charge sheet had failed to indicate where the offence had been committed in order to enable the court to make a decision whether the National Assembly Privileges and Immunities Act could be applied.

The magistrates noted that the prosecution had failed to give adequate information on who uttered the words suspected to be of incitement nature that the Mps were being charged of.

“There is no way same words can be jointly uttered by two people. The charge sheet details attribute the words that the two are being charged of as having been issued jointly which is not possible,” he said.

Waweru added that the first quote as contained in the charge sheet “If you do not want to disarm the Pokot, Samburu it is only the Turkana’s you want to disarm” was more of a complaint from the MPs and not an incitement remark.

On the second quote “That you come in the night to shell a village they decide that they better face them out in the valley and that is what happened and in the valley it is harsh and hot you cannot fight there if you have not fought there” the magistrate explained that it appeared to be more of an opinion as to why the matter took the turn of events.

Waweru added that he did not see any particulars supporting the charges preferred against the two noting that the charge sheet should give sufficient and reasonable allegations to allow the defense prepare itself.

“I therefore find the particulars of the charge sheet do not support the charges as per section 34 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) therefore I reject the charge. You can leave,” he told the MPs.

The conflict in Samburu led to the death of 42 police officers including police reservists, which has seen the government deploy the military to the area.