Brian Mwenda Njagi a young Kenyan accused of impersonating a High Court lawyer was on Wednesday charged before a Nairobi court.
Mwenda was charged with making a fake certificate for admission to practice law as an Advocate.
Mwenda who appeared before Chief Magistrate Lucas Onyina denied six counts of making a false document, uttering a false document and identity theft.
In the first count, he is charged with intent to deceive, knowingly and fraudulently making a false document namely a certificate of admission p.105/21249/22 in the name of Brian Mwenda N.
He allegedly purported it to be a certificate of Admission to practice as an Advocate of the High Court duly issued by the deputy registrar of the High Court.
Mwenda is said to have committed the offence between August 30, 2022, and March 3, 2023, at an unknown place within the country.
He face another charge of fraudulently uttering a forged certificate of Admission in the name of Brian Mwenda N on March 3, 2023, at the law firm of Mwangi Kiai LLP Advocates offices in Westlands within Nairobi.
The accused was further charged with making a fake practising certificate for the year 2023 in the name of Brian Mwenda N purporting it to be a practising certificate issued by the chief registrar of the judiciary.
The court heard on October 9 at the law firm of Micheka Omwenga and company advocates offices, that the accused person forged a practicing certificate for the year 2023.
Mwenda also alleged that on August 14, 2023, at an unknown place, he fraudulently and dishonestly used Advocates Admission a unique identifier assigned to Brian Mwenda Ntwiga, an Advocate of the High Court to access and use the Law Society of Kenya online advocates account belonging to Ntwiga purporting to be him.
However, the defence lawyers led by John Khaminwa and Danstan Omari have opposed the Law Society of Kenya president to participating in the proceedings as victims.
Khaminwa argued that LSK should be victims in the case as they would ask the President of LSK Eric Theuri and even the prosecution counsel to be either state witnesses or defence witnesses.
“As an individual who has witnessed the skills of the accused person, I think Brian is a sharp person”, the lawyer told the court.
However, the prosecution counsel J B Owiti told the court that the defence had placed nothing in court to persuade that he could be a witness in their case.
“No affidavit has been tabled in court. I am immune from any criminal claims having served as a judicial officer for 11 years,” Owiti said.
LSK President Eric Theuri is the complainant in the matter.
He said that LSK has an absolute right to determine who represents it be it in any proceedings in this court.
"It does not fall on an accused person to determine whether the LSK should be a victim or not.
“What should not be lost in this proceedings is who is the complainant in this matter. The issue of saying any advocate is a potential witness it means the defence lawyers can be a witness too since we are all advocates” said Theuri.
The magistrate will rule on the application on Thursday.
Mwenda has been remanded at the Industrial area prison.
Former Nairobi governor Mike Sonko was present in court to show solidarity and was ready to bail him out.
On Tuesday, Mwenda was grilled at the Directorate of Criminal Investigation in Nairobi for hours before being released on a Sh100,000 police cash bail.
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