Drama as Akasha brothers’ lawyers engage in nasty altercation
Drama unfolded at a Nairobi hotel on Thursday morning when two lawyers who have been involved in the case facing Akasha brothers clashed publicly during a media briefing.
Lawyer George Wajackoya had invited the media, saying that he wanted to speak on the extradition of the suspects.
But even before the briefing started, lawyer Cliff Ombeta, who had been at the Milimani Law Courts for a different case, arrived and said the former had no right to speak on the case, as he had been sacked by all the suspects.
The two then had a nasty altercation, with Mr Wajackoya maintaining that he was representing one of the suspects and that he had not received any court order, and he had never received any documentations, showing that he had been sacked.
SACKED
“Mr Ombeta is just an abuser, jealous and an attention seeker. I have no disengagement as far as I am concerned and my friend here is just being bitter, because he knows several things have gone wrong in this case because he cannot handle it,” Mr Wajackoya said.
But Mr Ombeta said the lawyers representing the Akashas had not given any instructions to Mr Wajackoya to give any statement on their behalf, and that they had not been informed of any press conference.
“He was sacked right before the other two lawyers involved in this matter on January 25, after the suspects and their families found him to be incompetent,” Mr Ombeta said.
He said Mr Wajackoya wanted to comment on the matter without the knowledge of the two rightful lawyers – himself and Kirathe Wandugi – despite the families of the suspects blocking him from having any association with it.
WAR OF WORDS
As the two lawyers were still engaging in the war of words, a family member, Rumia Akasha called Mr Ombeta and asked him to call off the press conference.
“Mr Wajackoya has no role in this case and he is not authorized to say anything about it and so I kindly ask everyone to disregard anything he says,” Ms Akasha said on phone.
Two sons of slain drug baron Ibrahim Akasha and two foreign nationals are in the United States to face charges in a New York court of trafficking heroin and other drugs.
They are Baktash Akasha, Ibrahim Akasha, Indian national Vijaygiri Goswami and Pakistani citizen Gulam Hussein.
