Kenyan NGO seeks signatures against ICC NAIROBI, Kenya, November 2 – A non-governmental Organisation has announced plans to start collecting signatures in a bid to compel the International Criminal Court (ICC) to stop blaming the Kenyan government for the failure to get sufficient evidence in the case against President Uhuru Kenyatta.
According to the Kenyan Citizens Coalition, the case against President Kenyatta is failing due to lack of proper investigation and not non-cooperation from the Kenyan government.
The organisation’s convener Ngunjiri Wambugu said that the signatures will be contained in a memorandum which will be forwarded to the United Nations Security Council, the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC, the European Union and the African Union.
“We will be presenting a memorandum condemning the ICC and its local proponents for undertaking shallow investigations in Kenya and for attempting to then apportion blame for these failures on the Kenyan state. To this end we are collecting signatures from fellow citizens, Kenyan Organisations and International Partners to justify our mandate in preparing and presenting this memorandum,” he said.
The coalition’s Legal representative Njenga Mwangi further stated that the office of the Prosecutor and its local operatives in Kenya should take the entire blame for bungling the Kenyan case.
The evidence that was adduced during the pre-trial hearings revealed that most of the witnesses were mungiki adherents. This is a proscribed group, the people who gave evidence were confessed criminals who stated that they took part in the commission of the atrocities,” he said “The prosecutor has taken that criminal gang, sanctified it and used its members as witnesses.”
In this regard, he said “we are concerned by the current happenings of the case facing President Kenyatta. There has been serious and deliberate distortion of facts concerning the case mainly by the office of the ICC’s Prosecutor, but also by some of our colleagues in the Kenyan civil society.”
He explained that the case facing President Kenyatta could have collapsed at the Pre-Trial Chamber if the Prosecutor was not allowed by a single judge Ekaterina Trendafilova to suppress the recanted evidence of witness number 4.
“Therefore as a coalition, we hold the view that the case did not merit confirmation, which is what justifies its current vulnerabilities, they will remain weak beyond the pre-trial stage. No level of state cooperation can cure these prosecutorial defects and inadequacies.”
The coalition further held that the Kenyan government has offered various forms of cooperation to the ICC.
ICC judges are due to rule on whether to grant prosecutor Fatou Bensouda more time to carry out her investigations and suspend the trial date, or if the case should be thrown out altogether after a status conference held last month.
