Kenyans face trial in world court

Published on Saturday 7 November 2009 19:03

KENYAN leaders who sparked bloody ethnic clashes after the country's disputed 2007 elections look set to face trial at the International Criminal Court.

The court's chief prosecutor last night said he believed he could quickly build a case against several of those suspected of having orchestrated violence that killed 1,300 people and uprooted more than 300,000.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo moved unilaterally against suspects, thought to include cabinet ministers, parliamentarians and several influential businessmen, after Kenyan authorities failed to do so.

His intervention comes amid fears that trouble could break out again, finally dashing the nation's already tarnished image as one of the most stable states on an unstable continent.

Moreno-Ocampo, speaking yesterday at the end of a three-day trip to Kenya, said: "We have so many reports saying the same, I think I have a strong case.

"Probably there will be two or three different cases, because there are different groups who committed crimes and we will identify the most responsible for each group."

"My mandate is to end impunity of the most serious crimes. I will do that.

"Everybody is worried about the next election in Kenya in 2012. That's why I understand the importance of speed."

Kenya's fragile power-sharing coalition government has been unable to put any suspects on trial, despite long-standing promises to do so.

The country's all-important tourism industry was devastated by the trouble, with thousands of tourists, many of them British, forced to flee.

But numerous attempts to kick-start prosecutions have floundered and many Kenyans doubt any powerful individuals will be arrested and charged because of what they see as widespread impunity among politicians.

One attempt to enact a law to create a special tribunal to try suspects failed, largely because many MPs failed to turn up for the vote.

The current government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga was created a year-and-a-half ago after negotiations overseen by Kofi Annan, the former UN general secretary.

The two men contested the last election in December 2007.

Fighting broke out between their respective tribes, Kibaki's Kikuyu and Odinga's Luos, after the poll. Luo people – as well as other groups, including the Kalenjin – believed the Kikuyu, who make up a fifth of Kenya's population and are the single biggest ethnic group, had cheated to get their candidate elected.

Annan, who still has a role as an African Union mediator, is eager to see the perpetrators of violence in Kenya stand trial soon. Last month, he warned that the 2012 elections would be marred by more trouble if no progress was made on punishing those responsible for the atrocities of 2007 and early 2008.

A Kenyan judge has already identified several top suspects and passed their names on to Annan, who in turn gave the list to Moreno-Ocampo.

The prosecutor said in other cases he had undertaken outside Kenya, the people charged by the ICC were those deemed to be the leaders of militias responsible for carrying out serious crimes.

He said that if Kenya investigated the same people for the same crimes as the ICC, he could defer to a tribunal in the country. But he said it would be up to ICC judges to decide if that would happen.

The prosecutor, who met with both Kibaki and Odinga last week, can only proceed with an international trial if he gets the go-ahead from the ICC's panel of pre-trial judges early next month.

If he does, he should be able to complete his investigation next year and define who should stand trial. "And that will clean the situation, so that you can have peaceful election," he said in Nairobi yesterday.

Many Kenyans now believe that both Kibaki, who runs the Party of National Unity, and Odinga, of the Orange Democratic Movement, are corrupt. Both men have been accused of dodgy deals, Kibaki with oil and Odinga with maize. But the power-sharing deal means there is no meaningful opposition in parliament to call them to account.

The ICC was set up in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands, as the world's first permanent court to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and other major human rights violations.

Most countries, including Kenya, have signed up to accept its powers, but several, including America, Russia, India and China, have not.

Moreno-Ocampo and his team are eager to prove that the court can help avoid trouble – as well as punishing those behind it – as it tries to establish its credentials worldwide.

Moreno-Ocampo, who is 57, made his name as a champion of human rights in his native Argentina. He helped prosecute members of his country's Junta, the military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 1980s, in the biggest case of its kind since leading Nazis were tried at Nuremberg after the war.

He has already opened ICC investigations into alleged atrocities in four African nations: Uganda, Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.

Moreno-Ocampo yesterday said that it was possible Kenyan suspects would be tried at the ICC's HQ in the Hague

But he also held out the prospect of a trial being heard in Africa, at Arusha, the city in northern Tanzania where those accused of carrying out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are being prosecuted at a special court.