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Two MPs won a reprieve yesterday after the High Court issued orders barring their arrest and prosecution over their alleged links to recent anti-government protests.

The lawmakers – MP James Mwangi Gakuya (Embakasi North) and Benjamin Gathiru (Embakasi Central) – are close allies of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

They moved to court seeking to block their arrest and prosecution for allegedly financing the youth-led protests.

Gachagua aides

The two were last week grilled by detectives over their alleged roles in the protests. Also questioned alongside the duo were three Gachagua aides, including former MP Ngunjiri Wambugu and George Theuri, and one Munene wa Mumbi.

High Court judge Chacha Mwita issued a conservatory order “restraining the respondent [DCI], their agents and or servants from arresting, detaining, confining, pursuing and or in any other way interfering with the petitioners’ liberty in connection with the allegations giving rise to this petition until 17th September 2024”.

In a petition filed at the Milimani Law Courts, the MPs’ lawyer, Danstan Omari, said that on July 31 they were summoned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters on Kiambu Road in Nairobi over allegations that they sponsored the nationwide youth protests.

‘Held incommunicado’

“Despite the applicants herein being cooperative and honouring the summons issued by the 1st respondent (DCI), officers from the DCI persistently and insistently issued threats and harassed the applicants on allegations that they were funding and sponsoring the anti-government protests in a bid to overturn the government,” the MPs claim in court documents.

The legislators add that on July 31 honoured the DCI summons and visited the agency’s offices, where they claim they were held incommunicado for a whole day and interrogated under threat of prosecution and detention.

“Further, notwithstanding the petitioners’ cooperating with the DCI Officers, they had again been summoned to appear at the DCI office on the August 1, 2024 in relation to the above allegations,” they added.

Mercilessly beaten

They said that as members of the National Assembly, they were required to participate in the vetting of President’s Ruto’s nominees to his Cabinet and that the constant summons had inconvenienced them.

They said they had been interrogated for one whole day and had given DCI officers all the information they wanted, and that no charges had been brought against them.

They told the court that they were apprehensive that unless it intervened urgently, they would be arrested, detained and even harmed. The MPs were picked on the evening of Monday, July 31, in Nairobi and questioned over their alled involvement in sponsoring chaos, during weeks of anti-government protests that rocked several urban centres.

They have denied any involvement in the chaos.