The Director of Public Prosecutions has suffered a major setback in his quest to keep SSU officers in remand as Court of Appeal dismisses their application seeking to cancel their bail issued by the high court.
The three judge bench on Wednesday put the DPP counsels to task to explain what facts they had that were compelling to deny the 15 officers bail.
State Counsel JV Owiti had a hard time trying to explain why they filed the application without material facts as required instead relying on the same reasons they gave at the lower courts.
Owiti said their argument is that by the fact that they are experienced they are likely to interfere with witnesses given the seriousness of the matter.
The judges noted that at the two lower courts There was no compelling reason and the courts used its discretion to grant bail.
“Are you convinced this is the way to handle this case,” the judge posed.
Owiti insisted that they were rightly before court and maintained that they wanted the appeal court to stay the bail ruling before the Kiambu high court.
“Rule 5( 2)a, gives is power to grant bail pending appeal but here you are telling us to cancel the bail terms issued by court.Bail is a right unless there are compelling reasons,” the court said.
The court was also informed by one of the defense lawyers that the matter being appealed by the DPP was the abduction case before Kahawa Law Courts which has since been stayed by the high court after the accused were charged with murder.
In the case, 15 police officers majority attached to the disbanded SSU were charged with abducting two Indian Nationals and a taxi driver and the magistrate granted them bail only for the DPP to appeal at the high court which equally agreed with the magistrate and released on bail.
This was the third attempt by the prosecution to keep the accused incarcerated but their efforts have been thwarted by the judges as they dismissed the application.
