Additional reporting by Sheila Mutua
Tob Cohen’s widow, Sarah Wairimu, now wants DCI chief, George Kinoti, Nation’s special projects boss and senior journalist, John Kamau, and State prosecutor Juma Victor Owiti jailed for six months for contempt of court.
Wairimu’s list also includes Office of the DPP (3rd respondent) and that of the DCI (1st respondent). The applicant wants the two offices fined for contempt.
Wairimu says the five respondents disobeyed an edict issued by Lady Justice Jessie Lesiit on September 16, which barred the DCI, DPP and the media from publishing content involving investigations into Tob Cohen’s death.
Wairimu accused DCI chief Kinoti (2nd accused) of “prosecuting” the case against her on September 13 after discovering Cohen’s body in his Kitisuru home.
“…[ On September 13], the 1st and 2nd respondents, knowing well that there was no iota of evidence directly or indirectly linking the applicant to the murder of her husband, continued to prosecute their trumped up case against the applicant through the print and electronic media by going into a frenzy of: malicious and unsubstantiated allegations; unsolicited commentaries; uniformed opinions; and unverified theories, all calculated to depict the applicant as a cold-hearted originator, facilitator and executor of her husband’s initial disappearance and subsequent murder,” said Wairimu in her application filed at the High Court in Nairobi on Tuesday, October 15.
On John Kamau, whom she has listed as the 5th respondent, Wairimu accuses him of writing a “damning article” published on September 16, which, she says, “cast aspersions on the innocence of the applicant”.
The article, Wairimu says, was titled Inside web of lies that led police to Cohen’s body.
Wairimu also accuses Kinoti of holding on to her matrimonial property with the aim of “handing it over on a silver platter to interested parties, including the siblings of the deceased as confirmed in an article published in The Star newspaper on September 16 titled Cohen gave sister Ksh400 million will”.
Juma Victor Owiti, the 4th respondent, is the State prosecutor.
Meanwhile, the pre-trial for Tob Cohen murder case begins on October 30.