ODM PLANNED VIOLENCE

The ODM leadership perpetrated and planned the post-election violence, the High Court in Nairobi was told on Wednesday.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua made the allegation while being cross-examined in a defamation case he has filed against the Nation Media Group.

And the court will now decide whether he should name those who he claims were responsible for the violence in which 1,133 people were killed and over 650,000 uprooted from their homes.

The ruling will be made on June 8. Dr Mutua who was being cross-examined by Mr Guto Mogere for the Nation, repeated the same claims in a document filed in court in support of his case.

Cheap and careless talk

He was asked to name the ODM leaders he alleges planned the violence, but his lawyer, Mutula Kilonzo Junior, objected saying the matter before the court is a defamation suit and not the ODM leadership.

Dr Mutua sued the media group on April 9, 2008 over an article it published in relation to the post-election violence. The article, he says, showed him as an individual who perpetually engages in cheap and careless talk.

The story arose from an interview Dr Mutua gave in Uganda.

While thanking the Ugandan government for hosting the displaced Kenyans, Dr Mutua spoke to the media among them KFM (radio station owned by Nation), government-owned New Vision newspaper and the Monitor.