• Police wanted the media stopped from covering the case but court rejected the request.
• Police at first denied abducting the child and even offered to help find him. But in an affidavit, they said they rescued him.
The lawyer of the American couple whose adopted child was taken away by the police has been allowed to visit the boy.
James Gitau is, however, not to reveal the child's location to Daisy and Matthew Mazzoncini, High Court judge Ngenya Macharia ruled on Tuesday.
He should also not be accompanied by the media. Gitau will be accompanied by the defence lawyer and Director of Criminal Investigations officers.
Ngenya gave the order after police admitted to taking the child away from the Mazzoncinis on April 5, 2019.
Police wanted the media stopped from covering the case, saying they revealed the child's identity which is unethical.
The court ordered the media not to disclose the child’s identity but declined to bar them from covering the case.
Police at first denied abducting the child and even offered to help find him. But in an affidavit, they said they rescued him.
In the affidavit filed by DCI's Bernard Baraza, police say the child is not epileptic, neither does he have seizures or convulsions as claimed by the parents.
They say they stopped administering Epilim, a drug used to treat epilepsy, to the child and started him on a drug for treating adenoid hypertrophy; a nasal condition.
“I am aware that the minor was rescued by the security agencies on April 5, 2019, and recorded at Spring Valley police station and handed over to the Child Welfare Society of Kenya,” Baraza says.
Initial reports indicated the abduction was conducted by Baraza of the DCI, which Nairobi head Benson Nyakwaka denied. He said the men who took the baby were not from the DCI but from the Serious Crime Unit.
But the SCU boss denied that his officers were given the assignment and offered to help look for the child and return him to his parents.
After many reports in the media, the DCI, through a tweet, confirmed rescuing the child from the couple and handing him to the CWSK.
The couple went to court to get the child back but the case failed to take off until on Tuesday, when the replying affidavit was sworn.
In the response on behalf of the Attorney General and Inspector General of Police, Baraza said investigations show the child is not unwell as claimed by the foreign parents.
“That the minor has been reviewed by many doctors, including a neurologist who said the minor has normal brain functioning and does not have convulsions,” he said.
“It was however noticed that the minor has mouth breathing, snoring, sleep-disordered breathing and hyponasal voice quality, suggesting adenoid hypertrophy, which had not been addressed.”
Social worker Martin Mwebia from the CWSK said medical exams established that the child is not epileptic and neither has seizures nor convulsions.
The CWSK said the Mazzoncinis' work-resident permit was cancelled on September 14, 2017, and that they are tourists who obtained guardianship of the child with a view of taking him out of the country.
“Daisy was on a tourist visa and could not qualify to adopt a Kenyan child, and that the child had been profiled for adoption by her through a relative, Gathoni Kirima, and her mother Mary Alice Wilson who had irregular custody of the child,” Mwebia said.
He said child adoption investigated and concluded that it was a case of child trafficking since the boy irregularly left the custody of Jean Petty Legacy Home to Kirima, where he was placed in foster care from where the Mazzoncinis took him.
“They obtained forged medical reports and children's officer’s report to obtain guardianship orders in court,” Mwebia submitted. “That they wanted temporary custody arrangements when in fact, they wanted permanent custody”.
The CWSK accused the parents of blocking monthly assessment and carrying an online campaign to raise money for the child's treatment.
“The government has expressed serious reservations regarding the possibility of the minor returning home,” Mwebia said.
Edited by Josephine M. Mayuya