Uhuru case set for next month

• Deputy PM wants his name expunged from report on post-election chaos

A case in which Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is seeking to have his name removed from a report on post-election violence will now be heard next month.

Parties in the case on Monday agreed with the judges that the matter be heard on March 18.

The last time it came up it did not go on because one lawyer, Mr Pheroze Nowrojee, representing the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), said Mr Kenyatta’s application was defective.

The court then asked him to file the grounds on which he wanted to object to Mr Kenyatta’s application and serve it on the Deputy PM’s lawyer so that he could respond. This was meant to give the court an opportunity to deal with any issue raised in relation to the case once and for all.

Mr Kenyatta is seeking to have his name expunged from the report presented by KNCHR’s chairperson, Ms Florence Simbiri-Jaoko, to Mr Justice Philip Waki, who chaired an inquiry into the post-election violence.

He is also seeking an order to have the findings in the report on him quashed. Through lawyer Desterio Oyatsi, Mr Kenyatta told the court the report was within public knowledge.

Mr Kenyatta, who is also the Finance minister, says the report alleges he organised a pro-Kikuyu fund in Central Province.

He says the rights commission made the report without giving him a hearing, which was against the principles of natural justice. But, KNCHR says Mr Kenyatta was misleading the court in claiming he was not given an opportunity to state his version of the events.

The commission had said that on April 15, 2008, it wrote to all MPs to come forward and present their version of events but no one turned up.

In the affidavit, the commission’s secretary Mohammed Hallo also denies making any conclusions in a report which named people who financed the violence in which 1,133 were killed and 350,000 rendered homeless.

Mr Hallo says the commission recommended for police to investigate the list of alleged perpetrators.