Kibaki kin threaten to sue Muite

The legal tussle between Kenya’s first family and lawyer Paul Muite intensified Monday with President Kibaki’s four children threatening to sue the former MP.

Through their lawyers Mohammed Muigai advocates, Judith Wanjiku, James Kibaki, David Kagai and Anthony Githinji demanded that the former Kabete MP issue an apology for defaming them.

However, Mr Muite through his lawyers told the four not to await his apology adding that he was looking forward to the intended suit.

“It will be vigorously and robustly defended at your clients’ risk as to costs and all other consequences ensuing therefrom,” Mr Muite’s lawyers, Gitobu Imanyara and Co. advocates, said in a response to the demand.

In the demand letter, lawyers for the four noted that Mr Muite had in statements in the media linked their clients to the 2006 raid at the Standard Group offices.

“The words meant and indeed were understood to mean that our clients were involved in the raid of the Standard group, are connected to the Armenian Artur brothers and that they partake in criminal activities that is, destruction of property,” the demand letter reads in part.

They asked Mr Muite to retract his statements and offer an unequivocal apology over the matter within seven days, from last Friday, failure to which they would take legal action.

In their response, Mr Muite’s lawyers said that their client would not be intimidated by “invocation of a social institution, the ‘First Family’ threatening court proceedings”.

They added that Mr Muite had not at any time referred to any of President Kibaki’s children when he made the statements that they are demanding apologies for.

“Each of your clients... is over 18 years of age and there in law Sui Juris (have capacity to handle their own affairs). Statements made on their father and /or mother cannot ipso facto (cannot directly) relate to them,” Mr Muite’s lawyers wrote of the demand.

Their demand came less than two weeks after President Kibaki called a rare press conference at State House attended by the First Lady to state that he had only one wife, Mrs Lucy Kibaki, and four children. The president, who appeared uncharacteristically furious, threatened to sue anybody who says he has a second family.

But it was the First Lady who sternly warned; “The President may not take him (Mr Muite) to court but I and my family will take him to court. Tell him that.”

On March 2, Mr Muite siad that the government ordered a raid on the Standard Group three years ago to stop it from publishing a story on the composition of the president's family.

He made the remarks at a function to mark the third anniversary of the 2006 raid on the Standard offices during which equipment was vandalised and computers confiscated.

He claimed the information about the alleged reason for the raid was given by Mr John Michuki, who was the Security minister when he appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Administration and Legal Affairs, which Mr Muite chaired at the time.