Activist Boniface Mwangi has been summoned to the Kibera Law Courts next week for making social media comments on police corruption.
In a post on Thursday, Mwangi said he was served with a formal notice from the court to appear in court Oct. 16 at 9 a.m., after he made statements on social media the previous day.
The statements followed a court hearing at which Mwangi is accused of attacking a police officer charges he stoutly denies.
“Sergeant Osman Omar testified today in court that I accused the police of corruption,” Mwangi posted on social media. “The Anti-Corruption Commission released this year a survey identifying police officers as most corrupt and unethical of all government agencies and departments. The case continues on November 20.”
It’s those statements, made publicly and against the police, that now appear to have landed him in additional legal trouble.
The October 8 post came after Mwangi attended a hearing for a case dating back to April 2, when three police officers reportedly stormed his Sema Ukweli offices in Nairobi’s Kilimani area, allegedly over a noise complaint.
Mwangi says one of the officers, who seemed intoxicated at the time, physically assaulted him as soon as he entered the premises.
In a chilling account published on the web within hours of the incident, Mwangi described being whisked away in detention and driven through the night to Kilimani Police Station — in pain and without treatment.
“Early morning of April 3, the OCS at Kilimani, Albert Chebii, saw me writhing in pain and ordered that I be hospitalized,” Mwangi tweeted. “I was taken under gunpoint to Nairobi Hospital and given painkillers. They conducted X-rays, head scan, and ultrasound to check if I had internal injuries following being punched around my kidneys.”
He states that he then reported the incident to police and the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) but was not encouraged to make it public.
Then, days later, Mwangi was abroad, he says police filed charges against him in court under the radar charging him with assault and offensive conduct.
“They sued me in court when I was not even within the country,” he had written in a previous entry. “The same officers who attacked me went about and became the informants against me.”
And now, on top of that ongoing case, Mwangi will have to answer another summons this time, not for fighting physically, but for what he wrote online.
The activist has remained adamant, stating that it ought not to be criminalized to tell the truth about corruption, no matter how uncomfortable.
The hearing of the first case of assault has been set for November 20.
