A Nairobi Magistrate court has ordered a journalist to disclose her source of information in the trial of the wife of the controversial UK based preacher Archbishop Gilbert Deya.
Senior Resident Magistrate Felix Kombo has summoned Evelyn Kwamboka of the Standard Newspapers to explain where she got information that was published in an article two weeks ago.
The journalist will be required to tell the court where she got information that a German couple had adopted one of the children who is subject of a criminal case against Mary Deya.
The order was made following an application by the State and Mary Deya’s lawyer Odhiambo Wakla.
The magistrate says the court is not bound by journalists’ code of conduct which protects disclosure of news sources and can only allow it, when such revelations endanger life.
Kwamboka’s lawyer wants the case referred to the High Court to determine whether she can be compelled to disclose her source of information.
The case will be back in court on the August 31st.
The Deya’s have protracted criminal trial where they are separately charged with three different cases of child theft.
A warrant for the arrest of Archbishop Deya is still pending before Nairobi Chief Magistrate court while his wife’s cases is still pending. In one of the cases she faces child theft case with three other women.
Deya, head of UK-based Gilbert Deya Ministries with about 36,000 followers, is fighting extradition to Kenya, where he is wanted for child trafficking.
Deya is at the centre of an international police investigation into claims that he stole babies from Nairobi’s slums and sold them to infertile women in the UK. The women were convinced they had conceived through power of prayer and are normally termed as ‘Miracle babies’.