Digital communications strategist and blogger Dennis Itumbi and Samwel Gateri Wanjiru pleaded not guilty when they appeared before Magistrate Martha Mutuku on Tuesday, October 15, 2019, after facing fresh charges.
Citizen Digital reported that Itumbi and Wanjiru were arraigned in a Nairobi court and charged with the offence of forging a document without consent, contrary to Section 357 of the Penal Code.
The two found themselves on the wrong side of the law over a letter which reportedly raised alarm over an orchestrated assassination attempt on Deputy President William Ruto.
The charge sheet read "that on June 20, 2019, at an unknown place within the Republic of Kenya, Dennis Njue Itumbi made a document dated May 30, 2019, purporting to be a genuine one made by a Cabinet secretary, a fact he knew to be false".
He was arrested on June 3, 2019, after the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) handed the Directorate of Criminal Investigations preliminary findings regarding the source of the letter and identified those who uploaded it on social media platforms. The letter had been drafted at a cyber cafe in Lang’ata, Nairobi.
On Tuesday, October 15, Itumbi took it to Twitter to refute accusations that the letter was linked back to the reported cybercafe in Lang'ata. He questioned why the findings by FBI, wondering why the DPP and DCI did not present them in court.
Itumbi was also charged with reprogramming a mobile phone in direct violation of Section 84G of the Kenya Information and Communication Act.
The charge sheet further read: “On the 30th day of June 2019, at an unknown place within the Republic of Kenya, intentionally not being a manufacturer of a mobile phone, you interfered with the operation of mobile phone make Samsung Note 9 Dark Grey dual SIM IMEI 352455/10/030/824/6, 352456/10/03824/4.”
On July 3, 2019, Itumbi was arrested and taken to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters for interrogation.
He was released a week later on a Ksh100,000 cash bail after Senior Magistrate Zainabu Abdul ruled that the police had squandered the days given for further investigations.
Wanjiru was charged with two counts on September 12, 2019, for forging a document and purporting it to be from a CS and publishing the false document.
During the arraignment on Tuesday, October 15, the court ruled that the bail and bond terms set earlier remain.
The case is set for mention on Wednesday, October 23, 2019, and the hearing was set for November 2019.
