The Law Society of Kenya has planned to hold demonstrations at the DCI headquarters on Monday to demand action following the alleged abduction of an advocate.
LSK President Eric Theuri said the lawyer was abducted Friday morning and her whereabouts remain unknown.
“We have visited several police stations to trace her in vain. The family has been tossed around different police stations. This is an affront to the legal profession because she’s allegedly been abducted for giving legal advice to a client,” Theuri said in a statement Sunday afternoon.
“We have instructed an Advocate to file urgent harbeas corpus application,” he added.
A harbeas corpus is a recourse in law where an application is made requesting the court to order that a person being detained, usually by police or prison officials, be produced in court to determine whether their detention is lawful.
“We also call on our members to turn up in large numbers at the DCI headquarters on Monday to protest this egregious attack on the legal profession. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Theuri said.
LSK is set to hold elections on February 29 but court has issued injunctions stopping the process pending the hearing of two petitions.
In one, High Court Advocate Shadrack Wambui moved to court after LSK Ad-Hoc Elections Board locked him out of the position of the Nairobi Representative 2024-2026.
High Court Judge David Majanja has set hearing on the matter for Wednesday, February 14.
Wambui was locked out of the race for "not validly nominated" to contest for the position in what the lections board said one of the lawyers who nominated him practices in Mombasa and not Nairobi.
In the second case, lawyer Ishmael Nyaribo faulted both LSK and the LSK Ad-Hoc Elections Board for setting the election date without first resolving the "unfair and flawed nominations" exercise.
In his petition, he asked the court to halt the election of a male representative to the JSC pending a determination on his inclusion to run.
He argued that if the decision to disqualify him were left to be, he would suffer irreparable loss.
The matter will be mentioned on Friday, February 16.
