A woman who featured prominently in tapes leaked by former Nairobi governor Mike Sonko linking some judges to alleged graft to influence his impeachment case said she made the confessions under duress.
Addressing a press conference in Nairobi on Monday, Merry Nkatha alleged that she was abducted and forced to make the sensational claims against some judges and advocates.
Nkatha claims she filed a police report under OB14/21/11/21 at Karen Police Station accusing Sonko of coercing her to implicate a number of people with promise to receive Sh20 million.
Read More
In her statement, Nkatha claims she was last week Saturday carjacked at gunpoint by three men who identified themselves as policemen, bundled into a car, roughed up and given a script to read.
“They then told me that Sonko will call me and for any question he asked me, I was to answer according the what was in the script. The documents were in form of a questionnaire and answers leading to implicate Advocate Cecil Miller and others. One man held a gun to my neck, while the other put a gun on my face. When Sonko called, I was so shaken that I could not answer the way they wanted so one man slapped me around and asked Sonko to call back after I was calm. He called after a while and I answered the way they wanted. After that, they left me and threatened to kill me if I reported to the police,” her police statement reads in part.
In her defence, Nkatha showed journalists her communication with Sonko in her call log, including incoming calls and their durations in a bid to prove her alleged kidnapping.
“I have never met Cecil Miller, Bishop Mureithi, I don’t know Judge Kantai. I have never met the likes of Chitembwe. Everything people heard on these leaked Sonko expose on the judiciary, I was coerced to do it. Right now, I am living in fear because anything can happen to me.
She admitted that she has known Sonko for a while and they were friends.
“The reason he chose me for this project is because he knows me very well and he knows I am friend with the current governor Kananu, so I can be a credible witness in front of the Judicial Service Commission when they investigate the judges who ruled in favor of ousting Sonko.”
She distanced herself from the video and audio recordings released by Sonko in exposés the embattled city governor has been sharing in the last week saying she feared for her life.
Sonko started sharing the videos and audio recordings after he lost his case at the Supreme Court challenging his impeachment paving way for the swearing in of Anne Kananu as governor.
