A television journalist who was slapped by Kenyan First Lady Lucy Kibaki has filed a formal complaint with the police, charging her with assault and calling for her arrest.
Clifford Derrick of Kenya Television Network said he filed the complaint on Tuesday, a week after Kibaki stormed into the newsroom of the nation’s largest newspaper with her security detail, demanding journalists be arrested for what she considers biased coverage and slapping the cameraman to stop him from filming the outburst.
”I am demanding that she be arrested and be taken to court because we had given [her] a whole week to apologise, which she has failed to do,” Derrick, who won last year’s CNN African Journalist of the Year award, said on Wednesday.
”We want to prove that she is not above the law.”
The confrontation, which lasted from midnight until 5am, followed regular reports by Kenya’s newspapers of allegations that the first lady acts more like high-handed royalty than the wife of a democratic leader.
News of the unprecedented encounter provoked widespread outrage in the East African nation.
The wife of President Mwai Kibaki arrived with her bodyguards in official government vehicles and then ordered her security men, who are police officers, to prevent anyone from leaving the newsroom and to confiscate the night reporters’ cellphones, according to media accounts.
”We are not happy about the police response. I was attacked in front of the provincial police commander and the chief of the central police station — and they did nothing to help me,” Derrick said.
”In fact, the people I believe to have been her bodyguards were trying to help her get the camera from me,” he said.
”She was using excessive force to get the camera.”
Officers at the central police station were reluctant on Tuesday to record the complaint, said Derrick, who claimed he spent at least two hours there before an officer agreed to register the statement.
”In terms of justice being served, I am keeping my fingers crossed,” said Derrick, adding that he has already received several calls warning him to be careful and that he can never win a confrontation with the First Lady.
Meanwhile, the president’s office on Wednesday filed an official complaint to the Media Council over the coverage of last week’s confrontation.
The president’s office, however, did not express remorse for the assault on the reporter.
”There is clearly nothing wrong with the first lady making a physical appearance at the newsroom to demand accurate coverage,” according a letter sent to the head of Media Council complaints committee.
”As a Kenyan, forget about being the First Lady, Lucy Kibaki has a reputation to protect and is entitled to seek redress whether legal or otherwise when this reputation is injured,” the letter reads. – Sapa-AP