As I noted in my post at the time of the dismissal of the Uhuru Kenyatta charges in December 20014, Ocampo, the Donors and “The Presumption of Arrogance,” a story of babes in the woods of Mt. Kenya?, the United States’ support for “local tribunals” for the murder and mayhem in the 2007-08 political contest connected to the failed December 27, 2007 general election was akin to support for Santa Claus to bring a cure for Ebola. Local tribunals were never going to happen under any scenario after we helped divert attention from the falsification of the vote tallies in the presidential race to give Kibaki an unwarranted second term and a continued monopoly over state violence.

It was always the ICC or nothing; we have now gone from six cases to none, without even getting any of the perps to trial. Eight years after the PEV, we can say conclusively that the violence worked in spite of the (temporary) grousing of some in the “international community” and the steadfast courage of Kenyan human rights and democracy advocates.

Presumably we will never see the evidence regarding the post election murders in the possession of the Kenyan Government, but someday perhaps we will know what evidence the United States Government gathered.

I was sad to see Kikuyu wananchi celebrating the demise of the Kenyatta prosecution on the notion that Kenyatta had effected the violence to protect his “tribesmen”. Certainly I have always felt that his motivations were, to the contrary, to protect and advance his own power and privilege, and I see Ruto in the same light.

UhuRuto billboard March 2013

Kenyan civil society groups who have been carrying the lonely burden of advocating for judicial accountability for the organized portion of the post election violence once again stood in the face of state power this week.

The Kenyan government sought to divert the International Criminal Court proceedings against Deputy President William Ruto for crimes against humanity through appeal to the Assembly of State Parties to overrule the Court on the admissibility of certain evidence and through a separate “investigation” of the prosecution.

I don’t know personally whether or not Ruto is guilty of the things he is accused of, but there appears to a great fear on the part of Ruto and the current political leadership that he might well be convicted by the judges. Certainly Kenya’s senior politicians would know better than I the details of who committed the underlying acts forming the basis of the charges.

Statement By KPTJ at the 14th Assembly Of States Parties Of The Rome Statute

Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice is a collective of over 30 civil society organisations, which has been seeking accountability for the post election violence of 2008.

Mr./Mme. President Once again, this Assembly is being called upon to discuss concerns raised by the Republic of Kenya regarding the application of the Rome Statute in on-going trials before the International Criminal Court. This time Kenya is asking the Assembly to make a finding on the application of Rule 68.

Kenya is also asking for an ad hoc mechanism of five independent jurists to audit the Prosecutor’s witness identification and recruitment processes in a petition endorsed by some 190 parliamentarians.
The Kenyan state thus desires that this Assembly make a finding on a matter that is a pending decision in the proceedings of the Court. Such a finding would constitute a direct and wholly unwarranted interference by this Assembly with the judicial mandate of the court.

It also creates a very dangerous precedent – that States Parties with active situations and cases before the Court can reverse decisions or leverage political pressure on the Court through the ASP, to take decisions in favour of the States’ positions.

This is not the first time that Kenya has asked the Assembly to discuss a matter that is already before the court. During the 12th Assembly in this very hall, discussions resulted in the amendment of Rule 134 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and Rule 68 was also approved.

The request to discuss the Prosecutor’s strategy of identification and engagement of witnesses is an escalation of the failed request made at ASP 13 for a discussion on the ‘ICC Prosecutor’s conduct’. States refused to have this discussion then. The present request for an ad hoc mechanism should be rejected as an affront to the independence of the Prosecutor’s office

Witness tampering

It is important that this Assembly steps back and considers the context in Kenya in relation to which the discussions about Rule 68 and the conduct of the Prosecutor are taking place.

The Kenyan cases before the ICC have been affected by unprecedented levels of witness interference characterized by bribery and even elimination. In the Kenyan Case 2, The Prosecutor versus Uhuru Kenyatta, 8 members of the Mungiki militia group who allegedly interacted with Mr. Kenyatta during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008 were reported to have been killed or forcibly disappeared.

Also, intermediaries for Mr. Kenyatta allegedly approached three Mungiki insiders, attempting to enlist them to identify other witnesses who would be willing to give exonerating evidence in favour of Mr. Kenyatta.
In the Ruto case, the Prosecutor has alleged that 16 of the original 42 witnesses have either been killed, recanted or turned hostile. One of the witnesses who died, Meshack Yebei, was abducted in Eldoret, the home area of Mr. Ruto, and turned up dead in another part of the country that is about 1000 kilometres away.

Arrest warrants

In an attempt to bring accountability for the interference with witnesses in Kenya, the ICC has issued three arrest warrants against three Kenyan nationals. However, none of these has been executed, as the Kenyan government has erected multiple legal hurdles to defeat the surrender of the accused persons to the ICC. This is in clear violation of its duty to cooperate with the ICC.

Who killed the witnesses and why? Who wanted them killed and why?

We do not currently know the answers to these questions. Whether or not the questions can be answered is directly tied to the conduct of the Kenyan state.

While showing no interest in the toxic domestic situation in the country, which has intimidated and silenced witnesses, the Kenyan state deployed a massive political strategy t influence how the cases from Kenya are handled. This has involved creating a highly charged, divisive and volatile political atmosphere.

This Assembly is now in effect being asked by Kenya to compound and reward the silencing of witnesses, and the shielding from accountability of those against whom the court has issued arrest warrants.

It would be a travesty if this august Assembly lent its powers to Kenya’s campaign to shield from accountability those who — because they have ultimate power over the country– have already used their positions to delay or defeat accountability for the crimes committed in the country.

This Assembly must think about the victims of the crimes committed in Kenya. Already, the Kenyatta case has been brought to an early end because of interference with witnesses. The underlying reason for the Rule 68 controversy is witness tampering. This Assembly must not condone it.

This Assembly must speak out clearly in defense of the independence of the Court. Cases being tried by the Court must be tried in the courtroom, not in the corridors of the ASP.

It is important for States Parties to understand that Kenya’s interventions are not aimed at strengthening the Court. Kenya continues to employ double-speak where it pledges to cooperate with the Court while at the same time actively frustrating it from continued investigation and prosecution of the cases at home and orchestrating a sustained international campaign against it abroad.

The Kenya State’s endgame, as publicly declared by various officials including the President, is the immediate, and premature, termination of the case against William Ruto and Joshua Sang, just as was witnessed with the Kenyatta case.

Let us remember also that Kenya has to date not offered domestic solutions for justice, accountability and meaningful and equitable reparations for the victims of post-election violence. Over 1,133 were killed, thousands sexually assaulted, maimed and over 600,000 displaced.. The Director of Public Prosecutions says a majority of these crimes cannot be prosecuted, a statement reiterated by the President.

Mr. President, Kenya’s domestic politics continue to define and inform its interventions on the ICC and at Assemblies of States Parties. As Kenya enters another pre-election season, characterized by inflamed rallies, hate speech and vituperation of the ICC and the Prosecutor we remind this Assembly that the ICC still remains the only viable hope for justice, truth-telling, accountability and reparations for the victims of the post-election violence in Kenya and the only credible deterrent against future similar crises.

KPTJ/19/11/15

From AllAfrica.com:

Ambassador Mahboub Maalim, Executive Secretary of IGAD, extended his warmest congratulations to President Omar Al-Bashir for his re-election to the presidency of the Sudan.
Ambassador Mahboub Maalim, noting the role of IGAD in observing the elections in Sudan, noted that the elections “were largely conducted in a peaceful and credible manner.”
Ambassador Maalim said: “I congratulate you on your victory and wish to express IGAD’s confidence that your leadership will continue to make earnest efforts to achieve lasting peace as well as prosperity for the people of the Sudan.” the Executive Secretary added that “I also wish you every success in these efforts and wish to affirm that you can count on my continued support.”

Here is the AU EOM preliminary statement as reported by the Sudan Vision. The AU’s pre-election assesment had noted that predicate conditions were not in place for a fair election.

And “Seven Things to Know About Sudan’s Election” from VOA.

Let me be clear that I have always supported the pursuit of the ICC cases for the 2007-08 post election killings in Kenya. Not because the ICC was necessarily a good option but because it was that or nothing. My country, the United States, officially as a matter of foreign policy articulated by the State Department, always supported prosecution of the post election violence by a “local tribunal” in Kenya. Which is quite exactly like being in favor of Santa Claus bringing a cure for Ebola in Sierra Leone. In no way am I against either, but there are obviously more challenging questions begged by the devastating facts presented in these situations. (See “Christmas Shopping–For Sale: Brooklyn Bridge, Ocean Front Property in Arizona, Local Tribunal in Kenya”)

In the context of the “don’t be vague, go to The Hague” vote by Kenya’s Parliament, our U.S. position has been inevitably opaque. We are not and have never been a member state of the International Criminal Court. As a general proposition under U.S. law our officials are not to be involved in supporting ICC prosecutions, subject to certain potential exceptions. Nonetheless, as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council the diplomatic strategy of the Kenyan government in the second Kibaki administration put us to a decision as to whether or not to support Security Council intervention to interrupt the ICC prosecutions in the two Kenyan cases. We declined to do so, to our credit in my opinion.

How to understand what has happened with the pre-trial decisions by Prosecutor Bensouda to drop the charges against the two defendants in the Government/PNU case, Muthaura (on 11 March 2013) and Kenyatta (on 5 December 2014), while the trial in the Opposition/ODM case proceeds?

Almost seven years after the post election violence we are left with complete impunity on the side of those who initiated the conflict by stealing the election and employed two of the three types of large scale killings at issue in the charges of “crimes against humanity”. ICC Prosecutor Ocampo’s Government/PNU case originally included Kibaki’s Commissioner of Police, Major General Hussein Ali, but the Pre-Trial Chamber declined to confirm the charges against Ali, as it declined to confirm the charges against Henry Kosgey on the Opposition/ODM side. The greatest cause of death as identified by the Waki Commission report was gunshot wound – understood to be primarily administered by the General Service Unit, Administrative Police and Kenya Police Service forces under Ali’s command. The “body count” of those who were identifiable by tribe as reported by the Waki Commission was greatest among the Luo–those targeted primarily by the Government side rather than by the militias associated with the Opposition.

So whatever happens with the Ruto and Sang case, the winners of the post election conflict–those on the side of those who stole the election in the first place and who killed to keep and enforce power–remain comfortably immune from any negative consequences, as well as with the benefit of what they have “eaten”. No more than two individuals face any charges of the many people involved in raising and facilitating the ethnic militias in the Rift Valley that killed innocent Kikuyu in revenge for Kibaki’s election theft and to some extent for leverage in a post election political dispensation, as well as to remove future Kikuyu votes and occupy land as in 1992 and 1997 (when Kenyatta and Ruto were partnered in KANU as now in Jubilee).

Post-election IDP camp at Naivasha, Kenya, 2008

I do not necessarily blame Ocampo for having tried and failed. He took on what was perhaps inevitably a nearly impossible task given his lack of actual power. I do very much fault him for raising expectations and seeming to believe as well as play to his own press, and then quitting before the end. I am inclined to think that he simply had no realistic understanding of what he was getting into in going after Kibaki’s closest lieutenants on their own turf and was tone deaf to learning. He seems to have believed that the perceived global stature of the International Criminal Court and his office meant a lot more than it actually did in the warrens of power in Nairobi, no matter how many painted his face on the side of a matatu or a duka. It is hard to imagine how he could have failed to seriously pursue Kenyatta’s telephone and bank records before he left the prosecutor’s office in July 2012. Or how he could have seriously convinced himself that he or his successor would somehow get the records through some notion of “cooperation” from the second Kibaki Administration in which Kenyatta was a key Minister throughout, from his initial appointment during the post election violence on January 8, 2008, as well as the Deputy Prime Minister from April 2008. Did he pursue evidentiary assistance formally from the United States under those potential legal exceptions I mentioned?

For details on the cases, as I wrote in a post in October ahead of the ICC Status Conference, “Susanne Mueller’s article from the Journal of East African Studies earlier this year, “Kenya and the International Criminal Court (ICC): politics, the election and the law”, perhaps gives the clearest account of how the game has been played so far.”

I do not doubt that Ocampo showed personal courage in the prosecutions of Argentina’s ex-generals and compatriots in establishing the credential that led to his appointment as the ICC’s first prosecutor. Nonetheless, the key distinction in that case was a change in government that made such prosecutions feasible. That did not happen in Kenya because the stolen election was allowed to stand, with an eventual settlement that if anything made the situation harder by adding the perpetrators on the Opposition side into that Government as more junior parties, helping to maintain unity for impunity.

As for my country, we tried to have it both ways by supporting impunity for the theft of the election–having at the very best “actively looked the other way” while it was happening– then notionally supporting “justice” for the killings that followed. Not an idea that was ever likely to fit down a real chimney in Kenya.

And yes, I do have more stories for “the war for history” series. For instance, yes, the State Department did know before the vote in 2007 that the Kibaki Administration had dispatched the Administrative Police to opposition strongholds in support of the Kibaki re-election effort. Of course if the “AP” hadn’t gotten caught by those Kenyan television journalists it wouldn’t have been such a problem; certainly we Americans did not say anything publicly. Now that Kenyatta’s grasp on power is that much firmer with the ICC case over, I don’t doubt that he will further ramp up his efforts to formally and informally undermine the new Constitution and shift power back to the Presidency and away from the media, civil society and the citizenry at large to avoid such inconveniences going forward.

This week I got an email from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor with a Request for Proposals for “Countering Closing Civic Space in Kenya and Uganda”. It’s a nice idea to support those trying to hold on to the freedoms they have won, and the amount of money–as much as $841,000.00 for a regional program for the two countries–would not have been trivial if it weren’t for the many millions we spent on the Kenyan IEBC during its 2012-13 “#Chickengate” binge, and on helping to sell its incomplete at best results to the public in the last election, for instance, among many other examples of the things we keep doing to contradict ourselves on support for rights, reform and democracy. And of course our much deeper overall long term “partnerships” with the Museveni and Kenyatta governments.

I may be the one showing naivete now, but I do actually believe that by and large most people in my government, as with the other Donors, do wish for better for Kenyans in terms of justice versus impunity, and for the protection of rights and the establishment of a meaningful democracy where voters have agency. All other things being equal, they would like Kenya to be a country in which powerful killers go to jail and votes count. It’s just that they can’t bring themselves to make the hard choices or take the risks required.

As the ICC proceedings play out, understanding the 2008 post election violence and evaluating the role of the parties, including the international actors, requires addressing the conduct of the incumbent Kenyan administration in the election itself.

In my estimation, those of us who observed the election in Nairobi watched as the vote tally was hijacked in a shockingly blunt manner. If this election could not be labelled as stolen, the question has to arise as to whether any election in Africa, as opposed to in Europe, Asia or the Americas, could ever be so labelled, in a context in which diplomatic actors valued “stability” as a key interest. Nonetheless, some who came to Kenya after the election, both from Washington and South Africa, have continued to suggest that the theft of the election may have been only a “perception” from ambiguity, or even asserting that the election was not “rigged” at all.

Because the truth matters in understanding the violence, and in preparing for the future in response to the Chairman of the current IEBC who has labelled the 2007 opposition as mere “sore losers”, I am going to devote much of my attention in the blog this year to articulating “the rest of the story” as I know it, as I continue to wait for release of additional public records under the Freedom of Information Act. I will dedicate these posts to my late friends Dr. Joel Barkan and Dr. Peter Oriare, who worked for a better process.

To begin, let me post here an August 4, 2008 e-mail I sent to Mike McIntire, the investigative reporter for the New York Times who contacted me on July 31, 2008 for an interview about the International Republican Institute exit poll which remained, as of that date, unreleased as allegedly “invalid”:

Mike,

After having some time to reflect on our conversation, I thought it might be useful to emphasize a few points in reference to what we talked about and the documents I have provided:

1. Prof. Joel Barkan at CSIS was our primary (indeed only) Kenya expert on our Election Observation Mission. Professor Barkan was independently identified by IRI to be invited based on his stature as an expert and was also one of those specifically recommended/requested by the Ambassador. Prof. Barkan had headed the Democracy and Governance program for USAID in Kenya during the 1992 elections when IRI conducted a very large USAID-funded observation mission and knew Sheryl Stumbras at USAID and the Ambassador well from his work in Kenya .

2. I got acquainted with Prof. Barkan in the lead up to the observation by e-mail as he offered suggestions, and my discussions with him during and immediately following the election were very influential in forming my own opinions about the nature of the evolving situation with the ECK and the electoral tally and the appropriate handling of the exit poll.

3. Prof. Barkan and I were in agreement that IRI was causing a situation in which it was generating unnecessary controversy and likely embarrassment by refusing to release the poll results on the presidential vote on an ongoing basis.

4. Prof. Barkan was impressed with the methodology of the poll and vouched for the work of Prof. Gibson/UCSD.

5. Again, the decision to involve UCSD pre-dated my arrival to manage the Kenya programs. To my understanding, there was never any question that the point of UCSD’s work was to create data that would be relied on and published–no later than the expiration of IRI’s exclusive right to publicity for the first 180 days. It was also my understanding that IRI was pleased to have Prof. Gibson and UCSD involved because of their strong reputation.

6. With the blessing of IRI Washington, including the press office, I had provided data from the IRI September 2007 public opinion survey to Tom Maliti of the AP in Nairobi for work he was doing on tribal issues as a voting factor. My discussions with Tom and the data were inputs for a story he wrote for the AP that fall linked on the media section on IRI’s website. Tom later asked if IRI would be doing an exit poll as we had done in 2002 and 2005 and I confirmed that we were. It was my understanding that we would have to decide WHEN and in what forum, not IF, the results would be released. [If anyone had asked, I would have been of the opinion that given the way things work in Kenya , we would have to expect the poll results to leak regardless.]

7. The Daily Nation ran a story, I believe the day before the election, in which our pollster, Peter Oriare of Strategic, discussed the fact that Strategic would be conducting an exit poll for IRI. While this was not something that I had authorized or been involved in, I did not consider it to be any type of violation of our relationship or against any wishes that I had conveyed to Strategic.

8. I think it is important to look at the exit poll situation in the context of IRI’s Election Observation Mission Final Report which has now been published as a printed booklet (they FedEx’d me a copy with a cover letter from Lorne in mid-July). The report, which I had the opportunity to provide input on, working with my staff in Nairobi on early drafting and through later editorial input on into April when I was doing follow-up work such as the internal exit poll memo of 4-20 that I sent you, is very explicit that IRI found that “after the polls closed and individual polling stations turned over their results to constituency-level returning centers, the electoral process ceased to be credible”. Likewise, the report states that “To date, there has been no explanation from the ECK as to exactly how or when it determined the final election totals, or how and when that determination was conveyed to President Kibaki to prepare for the inauguration.” The report also notes “. . . the obvious fraud that took place during the tallying of the presidential race . . . ” The Executive Summary states: ” . . . IRI has reason to believe that electoral fraud took place and condemns that fraud. The rigging and falsifying of official documentation constitutes a betrayal of the majority of the Kenyan people who peacefully and patiently waited in long lines to vote on December 27.”

9. It should be recognized that between the time that Kibaki was quickly sworn in and the announcement of the initial agreement at the end of February in the Kofi Annan talks that led to the formation of the GNU in April, there were clear indications that Kibaki and his supporters were using the time to attempt to consolidate power. Initial efforts toward mediation from other African leaders, including Bishop Tutu were dismissed, key cabinet posts were filled unilaterally, etc. Even with Annan talks, the Kibaki position on behalf of the “Government of Kenya” was that it was something less than actual mediation.

10. To this day, there has been nothing done to reform the ECK and there has been no accountability for the misconduct discussed in the IRI EOM report. As best I can tell from what I have read about the hearings conducted around the country by the Kreigler commission, the situation remains one in which partisans of the PNU side argue that there was rigging and misconduct on both sides, that it was as bad in Nyanza by ODM as by PNU in Central and that the ECK decision was appropriate, while partisans of ODM argue that the election was stolen. Because “the ECK is not an independent institution and is subordinate to the executive branch of the Kenyan government” [Finding 1 from the IRI EOM report] the IRI exit poll is the best source of actual disinterested data available under the circumstances.

11. To my understanding, I was charged with managing a foreign assistance program that was intended to be for the benefit of the Kenyan people, funded by USAID, but managed by IRI as an independent NGO. To me, this is something entirely different than something the State Department would do on its own for its own internal purposes–although in that case they would still need to be accountable to the American public and Congress.

12. I think we did a pretty good job with limited resources on the actual election observation. I think we did a pretty good job with the exit poll, too. On balance, my experience as Resident Director of the East Africa office was good, with the exception of the specific situation that arose about the exit poll–just as I had had a positive experience as a volunteer with IRI in Central Asia that led me to be interested in making a bigger commitment to go manage IRI programs in Kenya on leave from my primary career. IRI is a fairly small organization in some ways, but they work all over the world, with programs large and small–ours in Kenya was a small one. As best I know, the program in Kenya had a good reputation and had done good, albeit limited, work in Kenya , over a period of years, due in greatest part to the Kenyans on the local staff. This is not anything like what may have happened in Haiti where the program itself may have gotten out of bounds (and in fact I was told that my successor could not be a member of my local staff because of policy in place as a result of that kind of past experience requiring expatriate leadership in the Country Director position). Whatever happened in Washington regarding the exit poll was a departure from my expectations and experience with IRI otherwise.

13. I am told that things have been “different” in IRI recently by people who have been around the organization for awhile, and it is frequently attributed to a hypersensitivity to the situation where John McCain as the long-time Chairman of the Board has been a leading presidential candidate and then the presumptive Republican nominee. This was something that I did not think about in the context of deciding to take the Kenya position at this particular time (and in the spring of 2007 McCain didn’t look very likely to be the nominee anyway). Another twist in regard to Kenya is Obama’s background there and most recently, the things that are circulating against Obama within the “religious right” regarding some notion that Obama was somehow involved in conspiring in Kenya with Odinga on behalf of Muslims against Christians in the context of the Kenyan election and in the context of the post-election violence–laid against a backdrop in which the policy justification for the State Dept. to support Kibaki would presumably tie into the “extrodinary rendition” controversy and more generally the notion that Kibaki has been an ally of the US in sealing the border with Somalia after the engagement of the Ethipian troops to attempt to restore the TFG and otherwise in anti-terrorism efforts, as well as in regard to other regional issues.

14. Ironically, IRI’s mission in Kenya has to a significant degree focused on working to bring minorities, in particular Muslims [the program is primarily funded through NED as opposed to the specific agreements with USAID for the EOM and the polling], into the mainstream of democratic governance. The most striking difference between the voting reported in the IRI exit poll, and what was reported by the ECK is the opposite outcome in North Eastern Province –by the ECK’s reckoning, Kibaki won in a landslide–in the exit poll, Odinga did. I am no expert on that part of the country, but we did do training for candidates in the province in Garissa, the largest town, and in Mombasa for others in the region, and my expectations would have been much more consistent with the exit poll results than with the ECK tally. Given the requirement that a presidential candidate has to get more than 25% in five of the eight provinces, the NEP vote looms larger than it would based on its limited population in a strict nationwide popular vote.

Ken

The International Criminal Court has ruled that Kenya’s President Kenyatta must appear in the Hague for the status conference in his case on the confirmed charges relating to the Mungiki revenge attacks in the eastern Rift Valley during the post-election violence in early 2008. At the time in question he was KANU leader and Kibaki’s new Minster of Local Government following the January 8 appointment of the “upper half” of a new cabinet prior to the African Union sponsored mediation led by Kofi Annan.

The AU process as structured between ODM and PNU negotiating teams stalemated, with the active resistance of key Kibaki “hardliners” and parts of the PNU coalition, including KANU, but Annan was able to get a last minute deal signed off on by Kibaki and Odinga that ended the immediate crisis on February 28. The settlement led to a Government of National Unity, with the addition of more cabinet ministers and a new, and ultimately temporary position of Prime Minister for Odinga, along with the agreement to appoint commissions to investigate the election itself and the post election violence.

The “Waki Commission” investigating the violence, in an unprecedented display of independence, provided a sealed envelope of key suspects to Annan for potential referral to the International Criminal Court in the event local prosecutions were not forthcoming, along with its extensive public report and redacted annex of persons credibly identified as having a possible individual responsibility for investigation. (The “Kreigler Commission” followed the ordinary practice of presidential commissions from the Moi era and reported privately to the President, and then released a public report disclosing broad flaws in the overall administration of the election but ducking investigation of the central tally at the ECK headquarters in Nairobi as discussed in Ambassador Ranneberger’s cable here.)

Eventually, Annan turned the envelope over to the ICC, which authorized investigation. Charges were initiated by the Prosecutor against six and confirmed by the Court against four in January 2012, of which one was dismissed by the new Prosecutor. So how has the defense of the cases been conducted since, or perhaps more descriptively, the counterattack?

Solo 7–Kibera

Susanne Mueller’s article from the Journal of East African Studies earlier this year, “Kenya and the International Criminal Court (ICC): politics, the election and the law”, perhaps gives the clearest account of how the game has been played so far:

. . . The ICC began to examine the Kenya situation in 2008-09, well before the 2013 election. This constituted a potential risk that continued to increase once the ICC received permission to start a formal investigation and the cases progressed.

The election came into play when two of the ICC indictees — Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, and William Ruto, a Kalenjin — decided to run for president and deputy president… It was an opportunistic alliance of convenience as the ICC had accused both individuals of masterminding the 2007-08 ethnically targeted violence against each other’s communities. Ironically, this union, the negative ethnicity that accompanied it, and the ICC’s involvement also may have partly deterred violence in the 2013 election.

Winning the election was part of a key defense strategy to undercut the ICC by seizing political power, flexing it to deflect the ICC, and opening up the possibility of not showing up for trial if all else failed. The strategy entailed using a series of delaying tactics to ensure that the ICC trials would not start until after the defendants had won the election and gained power at the highest level. The tactics ranged from mobilizing international organizations against the ICC, making numerous legal challenges designed to delay the court, and the intimidation of potential witnesses, allegedly by defense sympathizers and go betweens, to keep them from assisting the ICC.

The tactics were part of a larger design to undercut the ICC. Demonizing opponents, politicizing ethnicity, and attacking the ICC as a tool of the West both before and during the presidential campaign served this end and victory in the election. Once they won the 2013 election, Kenyatta and Ruto came up with another tactic: asking for concessions based on their political power, including pleas to drop their cases or not be physically present at trials.

Mueller suggests that understanding the interplay between law and politics in this situation, while very much business as usual in Kenya where “the rule of law is still weak, politicized and hard to enforce [and] individuals are often sanctioned for trying” raises serious questions of much broader international application as the Kenyatta, Ruto and Sang cases play out on a global stage in the arena of treaties, international organizations and international human rights norms.

Within Kenya there have been two momentous court decisions since the 2007-08 election and ensuing violence. Both were decided at the High Court (the Kenyan trial court, not the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court). The first was the ruling that President Kibaki was not entitled to unilaterally nominate the new Attorney General and Chief Justice. This led to the compromise whereby President Kibaki agreed to obtain the consent of the Prime Minister for a new selection for the Chief Justice, paving the way for the litigation of the CORD petition over the IEBC’s administration of the election process and the 2013 version of the central presidential vote tally (with the new Attorney General as amicus on the other side of the case). The second was the lower court ruling that declined, eventually, shortly before the election date, to decide whether or not ICC crimes against humanity suspects were eligible to run for president under the integrity provisions of the new 2010 Kenyan constitution. Thus in one instance a High Court stood up, and in another one stood aside, and ultimately the larger questions of power and violence at the highest levels within Kenya have been preserved for politics rather than law.

How will the Attorney General and the Kenyan State conduct itself on the international legal stage at its October 7 status conference, and how will Uhruru Kenyatta, as defendant first, and then President, conduct himself on October 8 at his status conference? I suspect Kenyatta will go, in his own personal interest as a defendant, knowing that he remains a long way from actually facing trial so far, even though by attending he will be undermining some of the anti-ICC forces he has unleashed in his counterattack on the Court.

For me, one the biggest tart ironies of the whole saga is the recent role of the African Union in joining the attack on the Court. The crimes alleged arose out of a purely Kenyan election dispute. If the AU wanted to support the inviolate primacy of the Kenyan presidency, why did it not stay out of the matter in the first place in 2008? The involvement of the ICC is the result of the settlement brokered by Kofi Annan as AU-endorsed emissary, which was agreed to personally by Kenya’s sitting president at the time!

I want to touch here briefly on what I have seen and heard in regard to ethnic “issues”–prejudice, discrimination, suspicion, solidarity, hate speech, and such–in Kenya.

An important thing for outsiders to realize is how complex, and deliberately obscured, these things are in Kenyan politics–and how much of what is said in popular fora in the United States is at least misleading if not flatly wrong factually and in some cases deliberately malicious. (I have finally just now brought myself to read the whole Chapter 4 on “Kenya, Odinga, Communism and Islam” in Jerome Corsi’s book The Obama Nation which was published shortly after I returned from Kenya in the summer of 2008 during the American presidential campaign. It was a major bestseller and thousands of Americans may have read more about Kenyan politics in that chapter than they have ever read elsewhere over their lifetimes. Corsi has a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard, so he is certainly credentialed far beyond me, but he paints a picture of the Kenyan election and the post election violence that is very much at odds with my understanding and experience, as well as anything I heard expressed internally at the International Republican Institute, or through my family’s church in Kenya or from our missionary friends or at my children’s missionary supported school. In other words, malicious.)

One of the most important and interesting things that I have learned (so far) from my Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department relating to observation of the 2007 Kenyan election was that the Ambassador’s staff reported to him and up the chain during the campaign that while there was hate speech showing up on both sides of the ODM/Odinga and PNU/Kibaki contest, the greater weight of it was directed against Odinga. This surprised me because I had relatively limited separate interaction with anyone else at the State Department besides the Ambassador and his personal approach and attitude in my dealings with him certainly gave no hint of this background from his staff in the context of his tactics in addressing the Kenyan campaign.

The bottom line here is there is plenty of this “negative ethnicity” to go around and most of it you will never see in the newspaper or otherwise in the media–even in Kenya, much less of course internationally. My personal experiences before the election in 2007 involved going to lunch with young middle class professional Kenyans–essentially strangers to me–who would openly and unashamedly if privately express the type of stereotypes about members of other tribes that you or I might hear in a private club in New Orleans about “the blacks” (if you are “white like me” anyway).

The attacks on Kikuyu in parts of the Rift Valley that underlie the ICC charges against Ruto and Sang were sick and sickening (as were those in 1992 and 1997) and so were the attacks in Naivasha and elsewhere that underlie the ICC charges against Kenyatta. So was the post election violence in Nairobi and Kisumu and other places that were not covered in the ICC charges. The families in Nairobi that I knew that suffered personally from the violence in those early weeks of 2008 were from various “tribes”. The families that sheltered in our compound happened to be Luhya and Luo; my staff were diverse but Kikuyu were more represented than others. All of us who were there are all colored emotionally I am sure by our personal experiences in that searing time.

Whether Ocampo as ICC prosecutor used good judgment choosing to bring charges against only six individuals as “most responsible” I do not have enough information to evaluate. To be frank, there are aspects of Ocampo’s approach as a lawyer and public figure during those last years of his tenure at the ICC that I am not personally enthused about. To be fair, as a real man and a real lawyer, he was never going to be as “big” as so many Kenyans looked for him to be when they were painting his picture on matatus and such, and he realistically never had any chance for more than some very small success against the dragon of impunity in Kenya. Just as the Government of Kenya was never really going to prosecute the post election killers, the Government of Kenya was never really going to cooperate with the prosecution by the ICC. Now we will have to see if the Trial Chamber is willing to pursue enforcement of the Government’s obligations or not.

Personally, I am not inclined to believe that the facts of the charges against the remaining three ICC defendants are based on either mistaken identity, or on some massive international conspiracy to frame them. I could be wrong of course. As far as Uhuru, I tend to credit the observation of a Kikuyu friend who said “I don’t support Raila, but its an open secret” that Uhuru did the gist of what he is accused of doing. I heard things about these matters in Nairobi in “real time” in early 2008 from the same types of general discussion that covered a lot of other important information that you won’t ever see in a Kenyan newspaper. But all hearsay. Maybe if the cases are dismissed, someday we will find out who really did it.

The most important question though is whether Kenyans want to treat each other differently badly enough to change the underlying kind of prejudice that makes a dangerous minority of Kenyans vulnerable to the hate speech from the politicians who will continue to use it until it stops working for them. Better democracy and effective governance for broader development in Kenya will depend on this change.

Counting-the original tally; December 27, 2007

“ICC acts tough on Uhuru’s assets, phone records” Daily Nation, July 30.

The International Criminal Court has directed that the Kenyan government be compelled to provide the property and financial records associated with President Uhuru Kenyatta if the government was not ready to fully cooperate.

In a ruling on Tuesday, the judges further unanimously endorsed the prosecution’s revised request that Attorney-General Githu Muigai had contested during the status conference on July 9.

The AG seems to have lost his argument, as the Trial Chamber V (B) ruled that the prosecution’s request was right within the provisions of the Rome Statute of cooperation.

. . . .

The judges further directed the prosecution to “pursue all possible means to get Mr Kenyatta’s telephone records.

. . . .

Of the items that Ms Bensouda had requested she was only able to obtain the details of four the vehicles Mr Kenyatta owned or regularly used between November 1, 2007 and April 1, 2008. These were obtained with the consent of the accused.

In fact, Lands secretary Charity Ngilu, in a letter that was read to the court, said that “doing the best with the resources and time available to us, we have not located any land, title or property registered under the name of Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta.”

. . . .

“ICC judges want details of all Uhuru’s property” The Star, July 31:

. . . .

The Chamber also trashed arguments by the AG that the “work of prosecution investigators was being outsourced to the Kenyan government”. The judges, Kuniko Ozaki, Geoffrey Henderson and Robert Fremr, also validated the extensive requests by ICC prosecutors.

“It is a reasonable investigative premise that an accused with access to substantial resources may choose to act through various intermediary entities, as this would in particular, reduce the traceability of transactions intended to further a criminal purpose,” they said.

Githu had dismissed the request by Prosecution Chief Fatou Bensouda as irrelevant to the charges and too broad. The wide-ranging requests, which were made public for the first time late Tuesday seeks disclosure of the President’s records for about three years beginning June 1, 2007 to December 15, 2010.

“Investigations inquiries may not be confined merely to the immediate period of the violence,” the judges ruled. “In the context of certain records, a longer time period may also be justified for comparison purposes where pattern of activity may be significant in revealing unusual communication or transactions.”

This is the second time the ICC Judges are asking the Kenyan authorities to use compulsion to comply with its cooperation obligations to the court. The judges have threatened to refer Kenya to the Assembly of State Parties if it declines to disclose the records.

Already, a separate chamber has issued orders to the govern- ment to compel nine witnesses to testify against Deputy President William Ruto and his co-accused, journalist Joshua Sang. Uhuru’s trial is set to begin on October 7.

. . . .

If you are in Washington for the Africa Summit or otherwise on August 7 you can have dinner with H.E. Kenyatta at the Grand Hyatt from 7-9pm, sponsored by the Corporate Council on Africa, for $200 if you are not a member of the Council, or $100 if your are. Members (only) may wish to join H.E. Teodoro Obiang of Equitorial Guinea, starting at 6pm that night at the St. Regis. Perhaps with a good driver you can catch both. To register follow the links here; the Council is also hosting several less controversial events surrounding the Summit.

Happy Saba Saba Day–and how is Kenya?. (from July 7, 2012–would appreciate your comments here or by e-mail about what has and has not changed)

AFRICOMMONS

Ken Flottman’s Blog on Democracy in Kenya, East Africa and the United States

Tag Archives: International Criminal Court

Impunity consolidates power with “mistrial” for Ruto and Sang; congratulations to American friends and factors of UhuRuto administration

Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice statement to ICC Assembly of States Parties

Statement By KPTJ at the 14th Assembly Of States Parties Of The Rome Statute

Keeping the bar low for Election Observation Missions? ICYMI, IGAD congratulated Sudan’s Bashir on “peaceable and largely credible” election

The “top ten” most shared posts from the first five years of AfriCommons

Ocampo, the Donors and “The Presumption of Arrogance”; a story of babes in the woods of Mt. Kenya?

The War for History: Was Kenya’s 2007 election stolen or only “perceived to be” stolen?

Choices and Consequences: Next for Kenyatta’s ICC Defense, October 8 Status Conference [updated]

A few thoughts about ethnic polarization in Kenya as we wait on the ICC

Ahead of Washington Summit, Setback for Kenya’s Attorney General in pre-trial defense of President Kenyatta at ICC

Happy Saba Saba Day–and how is Kenya?

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Statement By KPTJ at the 14th Assembly Of States Parties Of The Rome Statute

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