Attorney General causes concern in Kenya

Questions are being raised about the quick dismissals of cases against powerful defendants while hundreds are in jail waiting for the Attorney General to proceed.

In one case, Attorney General Amos Wako said neither police nor prosecutors had had time to investigate whether the president's wife, Lucy Kibaki, had slapped a news cameraman during a confrontation over what she considered unfair media coverage of her family. This was despite the fact that the alleged assault had been seen on television.

In another case Judge Muga Apondi accepted the Attorney General's request to drop murder charges against a grandson of one of Kenya's first white settlers in the killing of a game park warden. The Attorney General had said that there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley for the April 19 killing of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden investigating possible poaching on the rancher's land. The judge said that though there was no way for him to verify Wako's conclusions, the law allowed the attorney-general to terminate a criminal case at any stage.