By Cathy Maulidi:
UTM Party secretary general Patricia Kaliati has spent a night in custody after police arrested her Thursday afternoon on the charge of conspiracy to commit a felony.
has evidence
Malawi Police Service spokesperson Peter Kalaya, in a statement released Thursday, said they arrested Kaliati on suspicion that she conspired with others to commit an undisclosed serious offence (felony).
“The Service has evidence which implicates Hon. Kaliati and two others for the said conspiracy. Details of the serious offence that she is accused of and individuals she conspired together with will be given out to the public at an appropriate time,” Kalaya said in the statement.
He added that they were hunting for the two other suspects.
In an interview after meeting his client at the police station, Kaliati’s lawyer Khumbo Soko said his client had not been formally charged and that the police had not shared the particulars of the matter with him.
“She hasn’t been formally charged yet. The way that this process works is that once an accused person has been arrested, they must be formally charged, where they are told the reasons why they are arrested. This process has not yet happened,” Soko said.
According to Soko, they did not want to be seen as interfering with the investigations, such that they had not pressed the officers to disclose the particulars of the case.
In the absence of the formal charge, Soko said it would be difficult for them to know if she could be given police bail or if she required court bail.
However, addressing journalists at the UTM headquarters in Lilongwe, where supporters also gathered, UTM patron Newton Kambala said they suspected that the arrest was politically motivated.
“We are very disappointed with the arrest of our secretary general. The charge that we have been told by police is that it is a felony; so, why are the officers failing to provide the details? So, we have got enough reasons to believe this is politically motivated,” Kambala said.
At the station, we had time to hear from Kaliati, who stated that she was just fine and that she handed herself over to the police when she was told she was needed at the station.
“I was summoned on Wednesday to appear before police but could not do so due to other engagements. And I decided to come today; that’s when they arrested me. They said there is an issue they are investigating against me and they wanted my side of the story. But I am not scared. In fact, I am okay as you can see,” she said.
Also speaking to journalists at the station, UTM presidential aspirant Dalitso Kabambe said they went to the station to give Kaliati moral support.
“She is our secretary general and we came to give her moral support. That’s who we are,” Kabambe said.
People’s Development Party president Kondwani Nankhumwa also visited Kaliati at the station.
Other notable faces at the station included Alliance for Democracy president Enoch Chihana, his vice Timothy Mtambo, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) director of women Mary Navicha, DPP vice president for the Central Region Alfred Gangata and DPP national organising secretary general Sameer Suleman.
At the station, UTM youths carried placards that relayed an array of messages.
Some of the messages called upon government officials to stop politically motivated arrests and instead look for fuel.
The youth also had a verbal war with police officers, who stopped the display, stating that the station was not a political stage.
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