CID officer to be charged over missing Embu county speaker

UPDATE:
The CID officer, Nicholas Muriuki appeared before Nairobi Senior Principal Magistrate, Peter Ndwiga.

The charge sheet read that he abducted Mr Mate on May 19, 2014 at Utalii Hotel in Nairobi County with intent to harm him.

He was however released on bond of Sh100,000 after the magistrate dismissed an application by the prosecution that he be remanded in police custody as investigations were not complete.

MAIN STORY:
Three people, among them a CID officer arrested over the mysterious disappearance of Embu County Assembly Speaker Justus Kariuki Mate expected to be arraigned in court this Thursday morning.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer who is based at the Pangani Police Station is said to have been one of the people Mate was scheduled to meet on the day he disappeared.

Nairobi Police Chief Benson Kibue said the officer and two other suspects were summoned on Wednesday and locked up as  they continued investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding Mate's disappearance.

Mate went missing on Monday as he was attending a meeting to discuss the county’s budget for the coming financial year at a Nairobi hotel.

Mate’s colleagues alleged that he went missing after a telephone conversation with a CID officer, allegations which the police have not yet confirmed.

Embu County Deputy Speaker Ibrahim Swaleh explained that Mate received a phone call at about 4:30pm on Monday allegedly from a CID officer, and thereafter walked out from the budget workshop.

“He just walked out without his phone, driver or car and that is not normal. Our County Speaker has always been writing to the Embu County commandant asking for bodyguards and he has not received any response,” he said.

On Wednesday, Mate's wife went to the High Court seeking orders to compel the Inspector General of Police to produce Mate in court. However, the High Court declined to issue the order saying that she had failed to prove that the police were linked to his disappearance.

Presiding Judge Weldon Korir said Mate’s wife, Caroline Wangari, who wanted the police ordered to produce him had not provided sufficient information to warrant the court issue such orders.

Korir further directed Wangari to serve her application to the Director – Criminal Investigations Department, Starehe Divisional Criminal Investigation Officer (DCIO) and Inspector General of Police before tomorrow, Friday when the application is scheduled for hearing.

Wangari had demanded that the High Court compel the police to produce her husband claiming that police were likely to subject him to injury, mental anguish and inhumane conditions.

In a habeas corpus application filed in the High Court on Tuesday, Wangari alleged that Mate disappeared in the company of a police officer whom she says arrested and took her husband into custody but had to date failed to produce him in court.

She also said that she has not been able to access her husband from any police station or received any communication on his whereabouts.