Why Miguna wants CS Omamo jailed

Exiled Kenyan lawyer Dr Miguna Miguna wants Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Raychelle Omamo jailed for six months for disobeying court orders to issue him with emergency travel documents.

Dr Miguna is also seeking compensation of $10,000 (about Sh1.1 million) from the government, being the financial losses incurred during his aborted trip from Canada to Kenya in November last year.

In an application filed at the High Court in Milimani, Dr Miguna says CS Omamo is in contempt of orders dated November 22, 2021 that required him to obtain emergency travel documents from any Embassy or High Commission within 72 hours. CS Omamo had been directed to ensure that the order was complied with. 

At the time, the order was issued by Justice Hedwig Ong’undi while Dr Miguna was in Berlin, Germany, preparing to return to Nairobi following his forcible exit to Canada in 2018.

He went to the Kenya High Commission in Berlin seeking to be granted the travel documents but the staff there refused.

“I duly identified myself using my valid Kenya National Identity Card and requested the officials present namely, Esther Nyambura Mungai (Deputy Head of Mission), Emma Malinda (Head of Consular Services), Matilda Lijembe and Alexander Karuma to issue me with emergency travel documents as directed by the court,” he said in court papers.

It is the third time the fiery politician is seeking court intervention to return to Nairobi after his earlier plans aborted.

They stated that they would not comply ostensibly because “they had not been served with a physical copy of the order and were “small people” who would lose their jobs if they complied”.

They also said he had not shown them a copy of the “certificate of regaining citizenship” without which they could not issue him with the travel documents as ordered by the court.

Upon returning to the embassy the following day with physical copies of the court order, he says the Kenya High Commission locked him outside the building in the cold winter weather for more than 30 minutes.

“They walked out of the conference room they had ushered me into without issuing me with the documents,” Miguna said through lawyer Kamotho Njenga.

“At no time did any of the Kenya embassy officials in Berlin, Germany, ask me to complete or fill any forms, nor did they provide me with any forms to complete that would have ensured compliance with the order of the court,” he states.

On November 25, 2021, after waiting for more than 96 hours in Berlin, he travelled back to Toronto Canada. 

“I was not physically, emotionally and financially able to continue to undergo the frustrations and abuse inflicted upon me by the Respondents. Staying on in Berlin any longer under the circumstances would have been unreasonable and also unsustainable,” reads the court papers.

He spent $4,300 on air fare and $3,400 on hotel accommodation, plus transport and necessities such as food and other basic needs. 

Air France has never refunded the fare for the Berlin-Nairobi roundtrip that he was stopped from taking, he says.

In addition, he paid $250 to change his flight from Berlin to Toronto. In total, he spent more than $10,000 on the latest trip. Besides, he spent equivalent amounts in March 2018 and January 2020 when the government prevented him from entering Kenya.

His lawyer wants the application certified urgent and the CS ordered to immediately purge the contempt and enable the politician to obtain travel documents from the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa, Canada, or the Kenya High Commission in Berlin, Germany, or from wherever he is immediately as ordered by the court.

In the event of further failure to comply with the orders, he wants court to issue an order of citizen arrest to Kenyans to jointly or severally, arrest on sight, and deliver the CS to Kamiti Maximum Prison.

He listed Attorney-General Kihara Kariuki, CS Omamo, Kenya Civil Aviation Authority Director-General Gilbert Kibe, Kenya Airports Authority Acting Managing Director Alex Gitari and Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i as respondents in the contempt application.