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`Rogue attorney-general' sparks concern in Kenya

Two powerful defendants, two courtrooms, two similar outcomes: charges are dropped in cases that moved even a magistrate to wonder aloud at the state of justice in Kenya.

In one proceeding, Attorney-General Amos Wako said neither police nor prosecutors had had time to investigate whether the president's wife, Lucy Kibaki, had slapped a news cameraman during a confrontation over what she considered unfair media coverage of her family. That even though the assault -- on World Press Freedom Day earlier this month -- had been televised.

Senior Principal Magistrate Rosemelle Mutoka said on Wednesday that though she had reservations, she was bound by law to accept Wako's request to drop the assault charges, even though "the court feels it tramples on the rights of the vulnerable, the downtrodden and the helpless in the society."

In the Nakuru High Court, about 145km northwest of Nairobi, Judge Muga Apondi accepted another Wako request, to drop murder charges against a grandson of one of Kenya's first white settlers in the killing of a game park warden. The attorney-general had said on Tuesday that there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley for the April 19 killing of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden investigating possible poaching on the rancher's land.

Apondi said that though there was no way for him to verify Wako's conclusions, the law allowed the attorney-general to terminate a criminal case at any stage.

Whatever the merits of Wako's conclusions, the Kenya Human Rights Commission was struck by how quickly he had reached them when so many other Kenyans are languishing in jail waiting for his office to proceed.

"The law should apply equally to all -- both to the rich and to the poor, both to black and to white citizens," Cynthia Mugo, the organization's media officer, said in a statement.

On March 8, another court accepted a similar application from Wako, but this time to dismiss the Kenyan bar association's attempts to prosecute the prosecutor himself for his alleged involvement in a corruption case.

"What we have here is a rogue attorney-general," said Ahmednasir Abdullahi, a former Law Society of Kenya chairman.

"If you look at these three instances, and many others, the president should have taken appropriate action to form a tribunal so that his [Wako's] acts and omissions should be reviewed with an aim of terminating his tenure," Abdullahi said.

Political scientist Mutahi Ngunyi said that the only way the rule of law can be fairly applied in Kenya is if its institutions were reformed to enable officials to act independently.

Some were unwilling to await reform. In the rancher case, which involved a Maasai gamekeeper, Maasai planned to protest Cholmondeley's release by blocking all roads leading to the world renowned Masai Mara Game Reserve on Saturday, Simon Ole Ngeibon, a councilor and Maasai leader, told journalists in Naivasha, about 100km northwest of Nairobi.

"That a white man can commit such a heinous crime with impunity against a government officer on duty and walk away unpunished in independent Kenya is hard to believe," said Martin Ole Kamwaro, a Maasai lawyer.

Cholmondeley's prominence and history had drawn attention to the case. His grandfather, the UK's Lord Delamare, was one of the first white settlers in Kenya.
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