Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung'wah has denied ever posting a defamatory tweet against City Lawyer Danstan Omari, who has sued him seeking Sh11 million in damages.
Omari alleged that Ichung'wah tweeted, “Phew, at least I am known in Kikuyu by my people unlike the fake media-based liar only known along Koinange Street!”
However, in his response to the suit, the MP says he has never tweeted or sponsored any defamatory statements or words against Omari as alleged.
“I am a stranger to any purported allegations of defamation, and I have gone through the purported publication, if any, and I do not find any defamatory words at all,” the affidavit reads.
He further says that the said statements are not defamatory in their ordinary meaning or any other prescribed meaning.
The legislator further says that the words in the tweet can only be described as fair comments, and they do not refer to and were not attributed to Omari.
Ichung'wah has also asked the court not to issue conservatory orders to Omari where he is seeking to bar him and his agents from publishing any defamatory information about him pending the hearing of the case.
Through lawyer Cecil Millier, the MP argues that the application by Omari is seeking to curtail his freedom of expression that is constitutionally protected.
“This freedom of expression should not be taken away on account of personal rights. Further, the application can have recourse in the way of damages if there is indeed proven defamatory utterances by myself in the future,” read court papers.
In his further response to Ichung'wah, Omari says that the tweet by Ichung'wah was made as a caption to a reply on a video of him posted by NTV Kenya's Twitter handle of an interview he did at the station.
He claims that Ichung'wah referred to him as a fake media-based liar, which is malicious and was a calculated move to injure his reputation.
He also says the statement that he is only known along Koinange Street, which is infamously reputed as Nairobi red light district, was to paint him as being an immoral person who keeps the company of prostitutes.
He claims that the said tweet has garnered over 191,000 views, 139 retweets, 26 quotes and 1,123 likes which clearly shows that it has been viewed by an extremely large number of people.
The case will be mentioned on August 14 for further directions.
