Kenyan police said on Wednesday they had arrested three journalists over an article alleging that President Mwai Kibaki held secret talks with a lawmaker who had successfully rallied opposition to constitutional reform last year.
Standard newspaper weekend editions managing editor Chacha Mwita, news editor Dennis Onyango and reporter Ayub Savula were arrested late on Tuesday after presenting themselves to Nairobi’s central police station over the article, which the government had dismissed as “fabricated”, police said.
After recording statements, the men were locked in the capital’s Kileleshwa police post, said Danson Diru, a police’s criminal police investigations officer.
“We are still carrying investigating and they will be charged when everything is ready,” Diru said.
In a front-page article two weeks ago, the trio reported that Kibaki held secret talks with Kalonzo Musyoka, a former environment minister who was fired last November alongside several other ministers, for successfully campaigning against the draft Constitution.
A presidentially-endorsed Constitution, which would have made the first changes to the East African country’s 1962 independence charter, was resoundingly defeated by Kenyans in a referendum last November after a violent campaign claimed eight people.
Kibaki’s press office and Kalonzo himself later denied such a meeting took place and government spokesperson Alfred Mutua demanded the newspaper retract the article and apologise for muddying the intergrity of the president.
The Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) protested the arrests, saying they were aimed at clamping down on press freedom.
“The same people who are trying to muzzle the media used to feed journalists with propaganda when they were in the opposition,” KUJ’s secretary-general Ezekiel Mutua told reporters late on Tuesday.
“What they are now doing is wrong.”
Kibaki came to power in December 2002 when long-serving president Daniel arap Moi, whose regime was notorious from clamping down on press freedom, retired. – AFP