enya’s First Lady and her security detail stormed the offices of the nation’s largest newspaper early today, triggering a confrontation where she allegedly slapped a television cameraman and demanded the arrest of another reporter and his editor, witnesses said.

Lucy Kibaki has a reputation as a strong woman

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Lucy Kibaki, wife of President Mwai Kibaki, also seized the notebooks, tape recorders and cameras of reporters covering her protest at The Daily Nation’s offices in downtown Nairobi in the early hours of World Press Freedom Day, said Wangethi Mwangi, the newspaper’s managing editor.

He said she remained in the newsroom, berating the staff for about five hours.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua refused to comment on the incident.

Mrs. Kibaki was protesting about stories carried in Kenya’s daily papers over the weekend claiming she tried to pull the plug on a party on Friday for the outgoing country director for the World Bank, whose residence is next door to the president’s private home, Mwangi said. According to the reports, she felt the music was too loud and wanted police to stop it.

parently angered by the coverage of the incident, she stormed the Daily Nation’s office just before midnight on Monday and told her security detail to seal the room and confiscate the night staff’s mobile phones, according to the account in today’s late edition of the paper.

She accused the Daily Nation’s staff of misrepresenting Friday night’s events.

“We cannot entertain lies, it is illegal and it is a crime,” the paper quoted her as saying.

When she saw television journalist Clifford Derrick of KTN attempting to film the event, she tried to stop him, he said.

“After she stormed the newsroom, I rushed to take pictures and she furiously asked, ‘What are you doing? Are you taking pictures? Stop!’ then she slapped me, grabbed me and we started to struggle as she wanted to take my camera as the police officers watched,” Derrick, who won last year’s CNN African Journalist of the Year award, said.

Journalists around the world gathered on Tuesday to mark World Press Freedom Day. Media groups in Africa hoped to use the day to focus attention on restrictive laws, such as Kenya’s criminal libel law, which African leaders use to quash dissent.

Most African nations also have so-called “insult laws” which forbid the media from any reporting anything that could be considered derogatory to the country’s leadership.

“This is one of those coincidences that helps to highlight the difficulties we face all the time,” Mwangi said. “This sort of intrusion into our freedoms sends shivers down your spine.”

He said he felt sure the president was aware of her plans to invade the offices, and that she had brought the Nairobi provincial commissioner and three police officers with her. There were no arrests, but Mwangi said he worried about the future of press freedom in Kenya.

“We are treading on very thin ice, even as we applaud the success we have achieved over the past few years, we still have a way to go, he said.