The video was taken in 2016 when Junet Mohammed was arrested for hate speech.
A video accompanying a post on X (formerly Twitter) claiming to show Suna East Member of Parliament Junet Mohamed being arrested for insulting Finance Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi is FALSE.
The caption on the clip reads: “Breaking news, Junet Mohamed akamatwa Nation Centre jijini Nairobi kwa madai ya kumtusi waziri Mbadi.”
This translates to “ Breaking news, Junet Muhammed arrested at Nation Centre Nairobi over claims of insulting Cabinet Secretary Mbadi”
In the video, the legislator is seen in the company of lawyer and current Siaya governor James Orengo and Homa Bay Town member of Parliament Opondo Kaluma with other men in suits, before being whisked into one of the standby vehicles.
Before he was appointed CS, Mbadi was the National ODM party chairman and a nominated Member of Parliament by the same party, where he also served as chair of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee. Junet is currently the leader of the minority in the National Assembly, nominated by the ODM Party.
But is the clip an accurate depiction of events?
To determine the clip’s authenticity, a Google image reverse search of a screengrab was conducted. The results show that the video was taken on 14 June 2016 at Nation Centre Nairobi.
On the day the video was captured, Junet had been hosted at Nation Centre on AM Live, a breakfast show on Nation Television (NTV) where it was alleged that he used hate speech, which later propelled a warrant for his arrest.
At the time of the arrest, Junet was a member of parliament from the Orange Democratic Movement and was campaigning for the 2017 national elections.
As reported by Nation, Standard Newspaper and the Star Newspaper, the MP was not arrested for abusing the finance CS but for his alleged hate speech.
Moreover, a Google keyword search does not bring up any reports of such an incident between the two. It further reveals that the last time Mbadi and Junet publicly interacted was during the vetting of the nominated cabinet secretaries, where Junet was a member of the parliamentary vetting commi.
Lake Region Bulletin has established that the video was taken eight years ago when Junet was arrested for hate speech.
This fact-check was produced by Lake Region Bulletin under the African Fact-Checking Incubator programme, with support from PesaCheck, Code For Africa’s fact-checking initiative, and the African Fact-checking Alliance (AFCA).
