Migori County governor Okoth Obado’s lawyer Cliffe Ombeta now says that his client was arrested due to public interest. Ombeta cliams that Obado might have been framed by EACC officers to have him arrested.
According to Ombeta, the detectives might have failed to get what they were in search for and as a result decided to get guns put in his house so as to allege that he illegally possessed them.
He maintains that many other guns have been recovered from different people who have up to now not arraigned in Court.
“Many guns have been recovered from several people who have not been arraigned in court. Why just this one,” Ombeta argued.
The prosecution is now seeking to detain Obado for 15 days to allow probe into illegal possession of the recovered fire arms so as to establish if there are other suspects.
In the dramatic arrest by five plain-clothes officers, Obado was whisked from a taxi in the basement of a city hotel.
Police said he had left an event to meet international development partners attended by Deputy President William Ruto midway. The officers drove Mr Obado to the offices of the Special Crimes Prevention Unit (SCPU) off Ngong Road and later moved to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters along Kiambu Road.
EACC detectives on November 13 descended on the Governor’s office and three homes in an investigation over questionable tenders.
At his home in Migori, they found 3 guns under a mattress in his bedroom while his house in Lavington, Nairobi had five. According to the law, the guns are supposed to be kept in a safe. The pistols had more than 100 bullets. Mr Obado who is a licensed firearm holder has told police some of the guns belonged to him and his aides.
Obado was just last month released on a 5 million bond with two sureties of KES 5 Million each in relation to the gruesome murder of Rongo University student Sharon otieno.
Do you think he will again find ways to get himself out of this guns case?