The Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti has moved to court seeking to have his Public Prosecutions counterpart Noordin Haji charged over forgery.

In a sworn affidavit Kinoti claims Haji forged signatures of key representatives from his office purporting they attended a stakeholders’ workshop held early this year to draft guidelines on new terrorism guidelines.

This came on a day Haji appeared to back down in their war over the charge sheets and amended the document to suit the demands of the DCI. Haji has now removed the title of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the logo of ODPP and instead replaced them with the Republic of Kenya and the Court of Arms in the charge sheet.

“As a result of Justice Mrima’s judgement, the ODPP after much consultations, made the following changes on the adopted charge sheet,” a memo from Haji’s office to the DCI stated yesterday.

Fake attendance list

But in the affidavit filed to the Constitutional and Human Rights division of the High Court by the director of Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) Maxwell Otieno, Kinoti claims the DPP, who is the first respondent in the matter, forged his officers’ attendance list at the workshop which took place at a Naivasha hotel on February 21.

“My officers never participated in the validation workshop and signatures being presented as persons who attended the workshop from my office and Anti-Terror Police Unit officers on February 21 and March 2022 are forgeries,” Kinoti states.

The documents states that further investigations have established DPP equally forged the said officers’ residence entries in the hotel where the alleged workshop was taking place.

In documents filed in court, the DPP had claimed officers attached to the DCI attended the workshop. But Kinoti disowned the signatures allegedly appended by his officers—Chief Inspectors Joseph Kipchumba and Stephen Ngereso both experts in terrorism and terrorism financing—for attending a workshop for the formulation of terrorism guidelines, saying they did not attend the same as alleged.

Kinoti also alleges the consultant expert involved in the drafting of the guidelines was not qualified and that he was selected due to his relation with Haji. He also says the taskforce comprised a majority of non-investigative agencies who lacked the expertise or technical knowledge in the investigation of terrorism and financing of terrorism.

“The respondent avers that the country is replete with an array of experts, including researchers, scholars and security experts of different fields well vast with matters of terrorism investigations,” the affidavit reads in part.

Kinoti says Haji forged the documents after he rejected his invitation dated January 13, to attend the said forum. 

He states that he rejected the invite because he had not been formally consulted beforehand. According to the court papers, the DCI and ATPU during a holistic scrutiny of the attendance list, noted discrepancies therein whilst capturing a hundred percent attendance rate from all the participants involved in the entire exercise of formulating guidelines.