Marianne Kitany has told court that people from Meru who attended the alleged marriage ceremony between herself and Meru Senator Mithika Linturi were threatened not to testify in their divorce matter.
This is after one of Linturi’s lawyers questioned Marianne Kitany who filed a divorce case against him, as to why only people from her side were witnesses in the case.
The lawyer insisted that the said witnesses did not want to testify in the matter since no marriage ceremony took place.
“If that was the case then they should have come to court to say that I was lying,” Kitany responded.
The lawyer told the court that the invitation letter of the ceremony indicated that it was to be an engagement ceremony and not marriage.
However, Kitany responded that according you her Nandi culture, the wordings in her language meanes marriage.
Linturi’s lawyers however asked Chief Magistrate Peter Gesora to note that Kitany had refused to answer some of the questions they posed to her such as whether she new Linturi was a married man before cohabiting with hi in 2014.
The questions she refused to answer were from her own documents including affidavits and certificate of urgency.
“The court should note that each time the witnesses was shown a lie in her claim she refused to answer,” said the lawyer.
The lawyers also questioned the source of the money she used to build their Sh 30 million Runda home which is also being disputed by the couple.
She said that she had saved money in various bank accounts even before she was employed as the Chief of staff at the office of Deputy President William Ruto.
Through lawyer Dunstan Omari, Kitany maintains that she did get married to the Senator in 2016 in a Nandi customary marriage ceremony.
She argues that she cohabited with him since 2014 when he was an MP and later moved in with her in her Kileleshwa home but later moved the disputed house in Runda.
Linturi on the other hand argues that Kitany was just a ‘visitor’ to him and that he never married her as he is married to another woman.
