Politicians and senior government officials helped to coordinate the massacre of ODM supporters in the 2007-08 post-election violence, according to an International Criminal Court document.
The 69-page Pre-Trial Brief was compiled by the office of Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and posted on the Internet on Monday night.
It said President Uhuru Kenyatta, retired President Mwai Kibaki, Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Kimemia and the late Security Minister John Michuki were central in the planning of the attacks.
Bensouda also named Solicitor General Njee Muturi and former Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waitutu as among the powerful individuals who influenced her key witnesses to conceal Uhuru’s involvement in the bloodshed.
According to Bensouda, this team of senior PNU officials bankrolled the outlawed Mungiki sect that went on a killing spree, raped women, burnt houses and forcibly circumcised ODM supporters in Naivasha and Nakuru.
“Mr Kimemia explained that Messrs Kibaki, Kenyatta and Muthaura had identified Naivasha as the target for the attack,” Bensouda said of an alleged meeting between Kimemia and the Mungiki.
She said that during the violence, Kimemia transmitted Uhuru’s orders to the Mungiki, maintained regular contact with senior Mungiki commanders, and distributed money to them.
“Before the Rift Valley attacks, Mungiki members received automatic weapons, ammunition, grenades, camouflage uniforms and police handcuffs that the Accused [Uhuru] and Mr Muthaura had authorised PNU intermediaries, including Mr Kimemia, to supply them,” the Brief said.
Speaking to the Star yesterday, Kimemia dismissed Bensouda’s dossier as pure fiction and full of falsehoods.
“These concocted falsehoods sound like a movie. It is sheer madness,” Kimemia said.
Kimemia said he was not in charge of security at the time of the post-election violence and only interacted with President Kibaki in 2008, when he was made PS Interior.
“Throughout my interactions with President Kibaki and Ambassador Francis Muthaura, I never saw them as people who would be of that character as described by the prosecutor.
“State House is not a place where guns are kept. Even the devil would be ashamed about these figments of a fertile imagination.” Kimemi said he did not understand why he was being linked to the Mungiki, when he and the late the minister Michuki fought hard to defeat the sect.
“Those kind of things mentioned in that document can only be done by evil people. We are not criminals. It’s a mockery of the whole thing,” Kimemia said.
Bensouda also named former MPs George Thuo, Mwangi Kiunjiri, Jane Kihara and John Mututho as Uhuru’s intermediaries who allegedly coordinated logistical elements of the Rift Valley attacks.
She said the four attended fundraising and planning meetings, received what she described as “large sums of money” from Uhuru and were instructed to attack perceived ODM supporters.
In 2013, Thuo died while drinking with friends at a popular Thika club.
The Pre-Trial Brief said the late Michuki and his wife Waitiri, also deceased, were central in securing Mungiki support for Kibaki even before the disputed 2007 polls.
The prosecutor said that after the massacre, Uhuru launched a campaign to conceal his involvement. She seeks to links him to the killing of at least eight Mungiki insiders.
“These killings and forced disappearances were part of a clean-up campaign to conceal the Accused’s involvement in the PEV,” she said.
“After the PEV, the Accused attempted to retrieve guns and uniforms provided to the Mungiki during the PEV. Acting through PNU intermediaries, including Mrs Michuki and Mr Machira, the Accused and other members of the common plan contacted Mungiki members and demanded the return of the materiel.”
The case against the President was withdrawn on December 5.
However, Bensouda has indicated that she may press fresh charges if she gets more evidence.
– the-star.co.ke
