. Justice Aggrey Muchelule declined the invite by the Raila family to block media from covering the case
.The High Court, ordered a DNA test to ascertain the paternity of the Fidel Odinga twins and ordered the media not to mention the names of the minors
Ida Odinga suffered a blow yesterday when the High Court rejected her bid to gag the media in a case against her daughter-in-law Lwam Getachew Bekelle.
The court, however, ordered a DNA test to ascertain the paternity of the Fidel Odinga twins and instructed the media not to mention the minors' names.
Ida is the wife of ODM leader Raila Odinga.
Justice Aggrey Muchelule declined the invite by the Raila family to block the media from covering the case.
The family was of the view that the matter ought not to be covered because it involves minors and that it is intrusive. Bekelle agreed with them on that issue.
However, the judge declined to bar the media saying that once a matter is filed in an open registry, journalists have access to it. He noted that minors should be protected and pointed out that naming them in media reports will be against the Children's Act.
“The law does not allow the names of minors, and if the media gives children's names it would be offending Children’s Act. That’s the only thing I would be worried about,” the judge said.
He also noted that if the parties wanted the matter heard in camera they should have requested that the hearing should be on his private chambers away from the courtroom.
Muchelule emphasized the importance of free media in society, saying that it helps people to have faith in the processes.
Ida and her daughter Winnie filed a case in Milimani Law Court, Family Division, opposing the granting of the rights of administration of the late Fidel's estate to Bekelle.
The family did not want the matter covered by the mainstream media. Only the Star published the story on Tuesday despite protests from the Odinga family. The family sought gag orders on Wednesday.
Bekelle said the objection by Ida and Winnie has been overtaken by events since it was filed outside the stipulated timelines by the law of succession.
The grant of letters of administration of the estate was issued on January 9, 2019.
Ida and Winnie said Fidel had twins – a girl and a boy – with another woman. They said the twins are legally his dependents.
“The petitioner has deliberately failed to include and provide or otherwise show the intention of providing for the said minors hence a red flag on her intentions,” Ida said.
She said Fidel had twins with Phoebe Akinyi Ogweno who are legally his dependants.
Bekelle, through her lawyers, had termed her mother-in-law's assertions a concoction of facts given that the said twins were born six months after Fidel's death.
However, she said yesterday that she does not have a problem accepting the minors as beneficiaries of her husband's estate if it is proved they are his children.
The case will come up for mention on November 13.
Muchelule directed Raila’s family members to cooperate for the purposes of extraction of tissue or blood sample for the sake of conducting the DNA to establish whether the twins have a right to inherit Fidel’s properties.
However, the court did not rule on where the DNA should be conducted, allowing the parties to determine that.
The Fidel was found dead on January 4, 2015, after a night out with friends. He was 41.
He was found unresponsive in the morning inside a spare bedroom at their Karen home.
Fidel left behind one son, Allay Raila Odinga.
Bekelle and Fidel had been sleeping in separate rooms and that morning she walked in to speak to her husband but he did not respond prompting her to call for help from Karen hospital and his parents.
It was not until around 6pm that his body was moved to the mortuary.
Postmortem results were never made public, fuelling speculation on what might have caused the death of Raila's firstborn son.
Bekelle says in court papers seen by the Star that a statement by Ida to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations detectives on Fidel’s death was at the heart of the fallout between them.
Ida claimed in the statement that her son's death remains a mystery.
“That even though the death of the deceased remained a mystery and efforts were made to establish what suddenly transpired, the petitioners herein, kept off from the family,” Ida and Winnie said in a joint affidavit.
They went on: “It remains unclear why the petitioner hastily ran away and kept off the family, whereas, there have been various efforts to establish contacts.”
The Odingas reportedly received two autopsy reports from the DCI investigators and from a lab in Germany which were discussed in a family gathering attended by family members and lawyer James Orengo.
At the centre of the court tussle is Fidel's assets and cash.
Ida and Winnie listed 10 properties and seven bank accounts that they say belonged to Fidel.
The properties include Fidel’s home at Tipuana Park, house number six in Karen, three parcels of land; two in Kisumu and one in Kajiado, 250 shares each in both Axum Investments Limited and Ambesa Investments Limited.
Others are two Range Rovers, KBS 027Y and KCA 026V, a Nissan Sunny KBR 301F and a Mercedes Benz KBG 595B.
Ida and Winnie also listed three accounts at Gulf Bank – two for Kenya shillings and one for US dollars, another one at Diamond Trust Bank, Capital Centre branch, Standard Chartered Bank, Kenyatta Avenue, Stanbic Bank, Chiromo branch where he ran a credit card.
A seventh account was at ABC Bank, Industrial Area branch.