Noordin Haji Clears The air on Withdrawal of High-Profile Cases

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Noordin Haji has cleared the air on the withdrawal of high-profile cases during his vetting for the position of Director General in the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Members of the vetting committee in parliament questioned Haji over the alleged misconduct of his involvement in the withdrawal of high-profile cases.

“You are trying to put blame on other offices and clearly you know the public doesn’t have confidence in you and we feel that you are getting this job because you are being rewarded by the president; are you being rewarded?”, asked Kitui County Women Rep, Irene Kasalu.

Her question was echoed by Gilgil MP; Martha Wangari who sought to understand what happened in the cases in which Haji had stated that he had evidence to nail the suspects only for him to drop those cases citing lack of evidence.

In his defense, Haji stated that a lot of the cases that were cited were necessitated to be withdrawn because there were issues with how evidence was passed on to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP).
“In some of the cases, the investigating officers themselves submitted an affidavit to say that they produced evidence that was incomplete, some evidence was tampered with and some were even forged”, stated Haji.

The DPP Haji added that the issue of withdrawal is not something that should be packaged in a way that is just benefiting the high and mighty or political reasons noting that the withdrawal decision was made by him and his team of prosecutors that he works with.

Among the high-profile individuals whose cases were withdrawn by Noordin Haji include Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, Public Service CS Aisha Jumwa, and the current Kenya Revenue Authority chairman Anthony Mwaura.

According to the Constitution (2010), Article 157 (8) allows the Director of Public Prosecutions to discontinue a prosecution with the permission of the court and thus he/she can withdraw cases where there is a want of evidence or in case of the abuse of the prosecution process.