This archive report was first published on 6 August 2019.
On August 6, 2019, a court in Kenya awarded author and columnist Tony Mochama Sh9 million as damages in a defamation suit.
Senior Principal Magistrate A.M. Obura ruled that there was no concrete evidence to support the allegations made by Patel and Mwangi that Mochama molested or sexually assaulted them at a poetry party in Loresho in September 2014.
The court heard that Patel and Mwangi had run a smear campaign against Mochama in 2014, using the hashtag #StopTonyMochama.
Magistrate Obura barred the two from publishing any defamatory statements against Mochama, stating that they had shown no remorse for their actions.
"I find that the publication was malicious on a balance of probability and I am not satisfied that they established justification or fair comment," she said.
The court found that the allegations made against Mochama were defamatory and were calculated to ridicule or lower his esteem in the eyes of the public through social media.
