Cases against Kenyan president, deputy will go ahead – ICC

The International Criminal Court cases against Kenya’s president and his deputy will go ahead, Chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said on Thursday.
Bensouda made this known in a statement released hours before the Kenyan parliament votes on withdrawing from the court’s jurisdiction.
The prosecutor also said that relatives of witnesses had been continually approached with bribes and threats to disclose the whereabouts of witnesses in the cases against President Uhuru Kenyatta and deputy William Ruto.
The two were accused of orchestrating violence after elections in 2007 in which 1,200 people lost their lives.
They are scheduled to go on trial in The Hague soon – Ruto’s trial is set to open next week – in spite of Kenya’s efforts to have the cases dropped or moved closer home.
Bensouda said in video on the ICC’s website: “The judicial process is now in motion at the International Criminal Court.
“Justice must run its course.
“Witnesses have gone to great lengths to risk their lives and the lives of their relatives to support our investigations and prosecutions.”
Kenya’s parliament began debating a motion on Thursday afternoon to withdraw from the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court.
“I am setting the stage to redeem the image of the Republic of Kenya,” Aden Duale, majority leader from Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition, told parliament in a televised session laying out the motion.
Even if Kenya does vote to withdraw, its departure from the first permanent International Criminal Court would take at least a year and would have no effect on cases already in train, Fadi El Abdallah, the court’s spokesman, said on Wednesday.
“It’s not possible to stop independent judicial and legal proceedings via a political measure,” Abdallah said.
The Kenyan president’s spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but Ruto’s lawyer said he would continue to cooperate with the ICC.
“The deputy president has and will continue to cooperate with the court,” said Karim Khan, Ruto’s counsel before the ICC.
“He wants to clear his name from this nonsense that’s being bandied about.”
Khan described as “offensive” Bensouda’s claim that the relatives of witnesses against Ruto had been intimidated and said she was trying to divert attention from her office’s “amateurish” investigation.
“To seek to create a fog of mystery around the inadequacies of her office by alleging witness intimidation is to distort the truth in hideous fashion,” Khan said.
He would not comment on whether Ruto supported the motion on withdrawal from the ICC.
Kenya has long campaigned against the trials taking place and has rallied support from other countries in Africa.
Kenya has asked the ICC to refer its case against Kenyatta back to the East African country, a move that has been backed by other African Union nations.
The AU has previously accused the ICC of selective punishment by primarily targeting Africans.
Kenyan officials concede the country has not in the past had the ability to try suspects accused of crimes against humanity, but say its reformed judiciary now does.
The ICC has rejected attempts to have the cases moved back to Kenya.
Jakoyo Midiwo, deputy majority leader of the opposition in parliament, criticised the action to pull Kenya out of the ICC, saying the opposition would vote against the motion, which “has divided the country down the middle”.
Reuters/NAN.