'We withdrew over 25,000 cases in 2021/2022,' DPP Haji defends dropping high-profile cases

Appearing before the National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Relations during his vetting for the Director General of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) position, Haji pointed out that he withdrew over 25,000 other cases and not necessarily against high-profile individuals.

The DPP underscored that during the period in question between 2021 and 2022, his office dropped a total of 25,716 cases to decongest remand prisons following the outbreak of  COVID-19 and therefore the withdrawal of cases should not be perceived as a political move after the election of President William Ruto in August 2022.

“People are trying to portray that it is only high profile cases which we have withdrawn. The statistics show that in 2017 before I was even DPP,  11,188 withdrawals were taken in 2018/2019, there were 10,600, in 2019/2020, in 2020/2021 there were 18,750 and in 2021/2022 we dropped 25,716 cases,” he explained.

“Some of these withdrawals, why the figures have gone up was because of the COVID period where we had gone out to decongest the remand prisons which were then full of petty offenders.”

He added: “The issue of withdrawal is not something that should be packaged in a way that we were benefiting the high and mighty or for political reasons. I assure the committee that is not the case.”

DPP Haji distanced himself from accusations of being coerced to drop the cases arguing that his office solely relied on the evidence tabled by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers and that the courts also shared the decision to drop the cases.

"I want to remind the committee that the decision is not made by me solely; the magistrate, the judge…when we go before them, they have the final say and you can refer to the Constitution," he stated. 

"The withdrawals we made were based on the evidence tabled to us and reviews were made openly and independently."

Haji denied being coerced to prosecute certain individuals instead accusing the DCI of forgery and lack of transparency while undertaking their probe.

According to the NIS Director General nominee, ODPP is not mandated to conduct investigations and thus can only rely on the findings of the DCI.

“Some of the documents examined by the document examiners at the DCI office were done fraudulently by the officers through coercion by those in charge. The implication of this is that many of those cases can be challenged because those documents examined were not examined properly,” he noted.

“As the prosecutor, we do not have the expertise to look at those documents; we trust that the document examiner is a trustworthy person, honest and a person of integrity. What happened is that those documents were tampered with…signatures and titles.”

Haji was recently nominated by President Ruto to be the NIS Director General to replace the current DG Major-General (Rtd) Philip Kameru.

Civil Society Groups have however petitioned the Public Service Commission against his appointment on the grounds of gross misconduct, incompetence and non-compliance with chapter six of the Constitution.