Kenyatta was speaking the day after three judges at the ICC had decided that the prosecutor’s case against Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua arap Sang, lacked strong enough evidence to succeed at trial.
We have not run away from justice, we have faced it
The ICC prosecutor had charged Kenyatta, Ruto, and Sang with crimes against humanity claiming they had organised violence in the aftermath of the disputed elections in December 2007. More than 1,000 people were killed and 300,000 driven from their homes in the ensuing clashes.
Kenyatta was acquitted of crimes against humanity by the ICC in December 2014. The court’s move on 5 April to dismiss the case against Kenya’s Deputy President leaves both leaders in the clear.
“We have not run away from justice, we have faced it,” Kenyatta said. “The court, through its own processes, has finally come to that conclusion that we have always maintained – that we had no case to answer because we never committed any crime.”
In an address aired on Kenyan television on 8 April, Ruto said: “The allegations that were made against me were criminal acts of evil minds that schemed, connived, colluded and fabricated a case against us.”
But the ICC’s Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said that the case against Ruto had fallen apart because of “a perfect storm of witness interference and intense politicisation of the Court’s legal mandate and work.”
Kenyatta said that justice would be given to victims of the crisis through Kenya’s own courts: “Those who committed crimes, be it arson, be it murder, we have a very clear record of individuals who participated.”
Rights activists in Kenya have raised doubts about the success of such cases, over eight years after the crisis. So far, they say, there hasn’t been a single successful prosecution within Kenya of senior political figures involved in the violence
Read the full interview in The Africa Report’s May edition.
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