The director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Hajj has denied faulting a decision delivered by the Malindi high court suspending criminal charges against Mombasa principal Magistrate Edgar Kagoni in the case that has brought to light a seeming rift between the DPP and the Judiciary.
In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, Hajj denied the existence of a rift between the two institutions blaming the reports on persons hell-bent on “scattering the war against corruption’.
“The ODPP respects the independence of the Judiciary & whenever aggrieved by any judicial decision shall pursue the available legal remedies. However, we shall continue to point out matters taken beyond judicial authority & discretion to undermine rule of law.” The office said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Justice Reuben Nyakundi of the Malindi high court ruled that the court did not find sufficient reason to press criminal charges against Kagoni who had been accused of masterminding the disappearance of exhibits among them heroine worth sh 30 million from the Mombasa law courts.
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The exhibits had been produced as evidence in a case brought before Kagoni ..
His lawyer Nelson Havi had termed the charges leveled against Kagoni as displaced saying the magistrate had already delivered a judgment by the time the exhibits disappeared.
Kagoni’s woes started after he sentenced Tanzanian drug trafficker Hussein Masoud to 30 years in jail and further fined him sh. 90 million warning that the sentence would act as a lesson to anyone planning to engage in the trafficking of narcotics.
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Two weeks after the sentencing, the exhibits produced in court which included sh 600,000 and 10.6 kilograms of heroin went missing.
The case laid out in the bare the frosty working relationship between the two institutions after the magistrate was held overnight.
This is despite the existence of a temporary order issued at the Mombasa high court stopping his prosecution.
The Kenya Magistrate and Judges Association who had gone to court blocking Kagoni’s prosecution had accused the DPP of intimidating members of the judiciary.
Kagoni was later released on a sh 200,000 cash bail after appearing at a Nairobi court the next day.
On Wednesday, the DPP said he would review Kagoni’s judgment file and issue the way forward on the matter.
