Sirat says he cannot be charged as a foreigner

Tuesday, 22 February 2011 20:22 BY CAROLE MAINA

Wajir South MP Mahmud Sirat now wants the High Court to reserve an earlier order requiring him to be charged with immigration offences.
The Immigration ministry alleges the MP is an Australian national who should face trial for being in the country illegally. The MP has lodged an appeal claiming chief magistrate Gilbert Mutembei who ruled that he should be tried was wrong. Sirat, who holds a Kenyan identity card and passport, says charging him as a foreigner would breach his constitutional rights.
The ministry which is attempting for the second time to deport the politician maintained that it is justified to charge him despite the fact that two High Court judges have declared he is a Kenyan citizen.
Through lawyer Kethi Kilonzo, he faults Mutembei for failing to find that the charge sheet preferred against him by the immigration was defective.
He says in his appeal that the magistrate should have considered an earlier high court decision that quashed a deportation order issued by Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang and the Registrar of Persons against him in 2008.
Kajwang had argued that the deportation order was reached at after they discovered he had dual citizenship. But Sirat says the magistrate should have found out that the issue of his citizenship was determined by the high court two years ago.
According to the MP, bringing charges against him when the immigration have issued him a national identity card is an abuse of the court process. He says for the immigration to describe him an Australian citizen is in breach of law.
The immigration argues that Sirat did not declare that he had acquired citizenship of another country and that he had traveled using documents of another country when he obtained a Kenyan passport.
The immigration says he obtained the document after misleading an immigration officer.