Miguna Miguna: My five-day ordeal in police cells

Self-proclaimed National Resistance Movement (NRM) “general” Miguna Miguna Tuesday narrated how he was held incommunicado for five days without access to his family or a lawyer.

The flamboyant opposition activist said police, who he described as crooks, humiliated him by locking him up in conditions “unfit for human existence.”
Mr Miguna, who was arrested on Friday on suspicion of taking part in a ceremony in which opposition chief Raila Odinga was sworn in as the people’s president on January 30, was addressing Magistrate Edwin Malochi at the Kajiado Law Courts.

CELLS

He asked Mr Malochi not to let police officers accompany him to the cells as he awaited the court’s ruling.

Donning a black suit and a white shirt, he asked the court to allow him to update his supporters on his ordeal as he awaited the ruling. “I do not want to go with these people,” he told the magistrate who granted his plea on condition that he remains in the dock with the officers besides him.

Present were his lawyers Koin Lompo and nominated Senator Judith Pareno who protested their client’s handling by the police.

CLENCHED FIST

In court, Mr Miguna was a picture of confidence and defiance, displaying the national resistance movement’s clenched fist symbol as he chanted: “They can’t break me. They can go to hell and back.”

Mr Miguna spent the weekend at Lari Police Station in Kiambu after police refused to free him despite a court order that he be freed on a cash bail of Sh50,000.

He was arrested at his Runda home, driven to Githunguri police station and transferred to Lari police station.

Mr Miguna told the packed court that from Lari, he was transferred to Industrial Area inland depot which he described “as the most humane” of all the police stations he was detained in during his five-day ordeal.

“It was only yesterday that I was given water and a toothbrush,” he said, displaying the white toothbrush.

On his arrest, he said: “They used explosives to break into my house, which is against the law. They did not even identify themselves. Had they done so, I would have opened the door for them.”

ROUGH-LOOKING OFFICERS

He said the officers looked rough and were not dressed in uniform.

“Some of them were bearded, while others had dreadlocks; in fact I thought they were Mungiki. They did not even tell me that I was under arrest; they just led me away with guns.”

His supporters cheered him on with opposition slogans “Tibim” and “Resist.”

At some point, just before the magistrate came to deliver his ruling, Mr Miguna felt his supporters were getting agitated and waved to them to maintain order.

The magistrate ruled that Mr Miguna be taken before Judge Luka Kimaru in the High Court in Nairobi before 3 pm for orders on his bail terms. He further directed that the fiery lawyer appears before him on February 14 to take a plea.

And, just as quickly as he was brought to court, officers pounced on him after the magistrate’s ruling and drove off fast in a convoy of three vehicles.