A Jubilee senator says Parliament is planning to scrutinise the Waki Report afresh after it was admitted by the ICC as evidence in the crimes-against-humanity case against Deputy President Ruto and Mr Joshua arap Sang.
Nandi Senator Stephen Sang on Sunday said the National Assembly and the Senate would also summon retired Appellate Judge Philip Waki and other members of the 2008 Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence while interrogating the report.
“We know that this report was biased, bogus and a total sham. Therefore, we are telling the ICC that it should be careful with the kind of evidence it admits,” he told Nation.co.ke in Iten, Elgeyo-Marakwet County, on Sunday.
“As the legislative organs of this country, we want to ensure that any report that finds its way to the international court is true to avoid circuses like those of ICC witnesses,” he added.
He said their aim is to know the process the Waki team followed before listing suspects it believed bore the greatest responsibility for the 2007/08 post-election violence.
It is from the Waki list that six Kenyans — Major-General Hussein Ali, former Tindaret MP Henry Kosgey, ex-Civil Service boss Francis Muthaura, President Uhuru Kenyatta, Mr Ruto and Mr Sang — were indicted by the ICC.
The Waki Report touches on killings, destruction of property and other activities that took place following the announcement of the 2007 disputed presidential election results.
The violence claimed 1,133 lives and uprooted over 650,000 people from their homes.
HAVE CLARIFIED
ICC judges have clarified that they only admitted portions of the report that did not directly touch on Mr Ruto and Mr Sang to act as a background to the case.
Mr Sang (the senator) claimed Parliament has the capacity to recall, interrogate and declare the report null and void if it finds it unfit for use in the case against Mr Ruto and Mr Sang.
The Jubilee government, he said, fully supports the setting up of the African Court of Justice.
Meanwhile, Bumula MP Boniface Otsiula, the drafter of a motion for Kenya’s withdrawal from the ICC, has defended his move, saying it is supported by a majority of Kenyans.
Mr Otsiula on Monday said previous research by independent groups had shown that those supporting The Hague-based court in Kenya were only doing so for political reasons.
“The truth is that most Kenyans think that the court process has failed the test of time, and has turned into a circus of political witch-hunt by the West,” he told Nation.co.ke.
SETTING FREE
He said the setting free of Major-General Ali, Mr Kosgey, Mr Muthaura and Mr Kenyatta had shown that former ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed the cases without evidence in bad faith.
The lawmaker, whose motion seeks to repeal the International Crimes Act, said his bid was “unstoppable”.
In the proposed motion, the first-time MP accuses the court of “terrorising and leading to disappearance of Kenyan citizens”.
“We will not allow the sovereignty of our country to be sold to neo-colonialists who are not interested in justice but arm-twisting African states,” he said.
The plan to pull Kenya out of the Rome Statute seems to be gaining strong support from the ruling Jubilee Alliance, led by President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto.
Mr Otsiula accused the government of failing to implement a resolution of both Houses of Parliament in September 2013 that recommended the severing of links with the ICC.
-nation.co.ke
