Kenya to dock top judge for misconduct

Kenya’s top public prosecutor has endorsed criminal charges against the country’s second most influential judicial official days after a panel of inquiry recommended her sacking.

The panel recommended the sacking of the top judge for gross misconduct following a gun drama with a guard.

Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the new department created to independently prosecute cases on behalf of the state, yielded to a request by the claimant, Rebecca Kerubo, the female guard who attempted to stop the top judge from entering a mall.

Nancy Baraza, the Deputy Chief Justice and Vice President of Supreme Court, was handed a 10-day appeal window this week, after the panel, headed by a former Tanzanian Chief Justice, said she was too tainted to continue as a judicial officer.

The judges said her efforts to force Kerubo to withdraw the case, filed at a police station in Nairobi, alleging assault, were too unbecoming of an officer of the law.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki is expected to decide whether she should be dismissed as an officer.

But the President’s decision would depend on whether she would appeal.

Local media reports said she planned to appeal.

Baraza would be facing charges of using a gun against the unarmed guard and pinching her nose and shouting at her “know people” after the guard insisted she had to undergo a metal detector test at the Village Market shopping mall in upmarket Nairobi.