Elias Kiptum Maindi has been jailed for 18 months’ for forgery and conspiracy to implicate Kenyan top athletes in mass doping scandal.
The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Court has on Tuesday sentenced Kiptum for forgery and conspiring to give false allegations against top Kenyan athletes to foreign media.
Kiptum was found guilty of 13 offences and has been given an 18-month jail term for each offence, which runs concurrently.
The second accused person in the case, Paul Simbolei a former athlete , was found guilty of on one account of the 13 offences of conspiracy to cause harm and has been released after the court ruled that he has already served a two-year jail term during the pre-trial period.
In her ruling delivered on Tuesday, JKIA Senior Principal Magistrate Njeri Thuku said Kenya has never had any state-sponsored doping cases as portrayed by the two accused.
The judge added that the case carried the gravity of damaging Kenya’s reputation if the documentary was aired.
Kiptum has,however, been given two weeks to appeal against the ruling.
The court, however,declined the maximum sentence of 3 years for Kiptum as requested by the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya in the case, which was filed in June 2021.
