Standard Media Group’s Chief of Staff Laban Cliff Onserio will spend his Christmas in jail after the anti-terror court in Kahawa allowed investigators to hold him for three more days in order to complete investigations.
Onserio was arrested last Sunday at the Holy Family Basilica church parking lot for threatening two people, a man and his wife with a grenade.
Sources have told www.sauce.co.ke that the journalist was apparently found by the woman’s husband who had been tracking them at the parking lot. When confronted, Onserio went to his car and brough out a grenade.
He threatened to detonate it sending the couple scampering for safety while screaming for the guards to come and help them. The grenade, according to sources belongs to a shooting range.
The Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) had sought to detain Onserio for 10 days to gather reports from various government agencies that are helping analyse his phones and the grenade that was seized from him on Sunday.
The Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) had sought to detain Onserio for 10 days to gather reports from various government agencies that are helping analyse his phones and the grenade that was seized from him.
The court directed the anti-terror police unit to release him any time before Thursday, December 29 if they do not have anything to charge him with.
“If there is no evidence, there is no need to keep the suspect up to December 30th. The law says the moment you realise there is no evidence, you release. The moment you find evidence, you charge,” Senior Resident Magistrate Oscar Wanyaga has ordered.
“The guiding principle in our criminal justice system is that an accused person or a respondent, in this case, is presumed innocent until proven guilty. In this case, the respondent has even not been charged whereas the prosecution has gone to lengths to show how serious the charges are, there is no indication as to the respondent being a flight risk,” the magistrate said.