The prosecutor of the international criminal court will ask for a formal investigation to be launched into Kenya’s post-election violence after failing to secure a deal with the country’s leaders.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the international criminal court prosecutor, met President Mwai Kibaki and the prime minister, Raila Odinga, in Nairobi to discuss how to bring the main instigators of last year’s bloodshed to justice. The suspects are thought to include several sitting Cabinet ministers from both sides of the coalition government.
Kibaki and Odinga, who have so far failed to establish a special local tribunal to deal with the worst crimes, as recommended by the official inquiry into the violence, were asked to request that the ICC take over the prosecution. This would have allowed Ocampo to immediately proceed with his investigation. However, in an apparent attempt to appease powerful allies in their parties who may face indictment, the leaders issued only a vague promise to cooperate with the court.
Without a referral from the Kenyan government, Ocampo must now request authorisation from the ICC’s pre-trial chambers in The Hague to open a formal investigation — a step he said he would take in December.
”I explained to [Kibaki and Odinga] that I consider the crimes committed in Kenya were crimes against humanity, therefore the gravity is there. So therefore I should proceed,” Ocampo told a news conference.
At least 1 133 people were killed either during ethnic clashes or in attacks by the police following Kibaki’s dubious election victory at the end of 2007. Hundreds of thousands of others fled their homes. The violence echoed the politically inspired chaos around the 1992 and 1997 elections, and Kenya’s tradition of high-level impunity ensured that no senior figures were ever punished.
Despite international pressure, the government’s efforts to pass legislation establishing a special local tribunal have proved half-hearted at best. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Kofi Annan, who brokered the peace deal between Kibaki and Odinga, handed a list containing the names of the dozen main suspects to Ocampo in July, along with several boxes of evidence collected during the official inquiry.
In a statement released by Kibaki and Odinga after the meeting, they said the government ”remains fully committed … to establish a local judicial mechanism to deal with the perpetrators of the post-election violence”.
Ndung’u Wainaina, head of the International Centre for Policy and Conflict, in Nairobi, described the Kenyan leaders’ decision not to refer to the case to the ICC as ”an unacceptable betrayal of the victims of the violence”.
”The easiest way to get justice for Kenyans was self-referral, but Kibaki and Odinga are acting only for themselves and their surrogates. It is now up to Ocampo to prove he means business in ending impunity.” – guardian.co.uk