The ICC’s vacation of charges against Deputy President William has vindicated Kenya’s position that the charges against him were made up, President Uhuru Kenyatta has said.
Speaking to French news agency France 24 a day after the ICC made the ruling, Uhuru said the crimes against humanity charges Ruto was facing never should have made it to full trial.
“We are very happy and satisfied with the result, and it just goes to vindicate the position that we have always held that these charges against us were tramped up charges, and we were never supposed to have been before that court,” Uhuru said.
Uhuru further dismissed an exception the Trial Chamber V judges gave while delivering the no-case-to-answer ruling, in which they said the prosecution is at liberty to bring up new charges should evidence of crimes emerge.
“I don’t believe that there is any possibility of them bringing up any new charges. For us as a country our focus now is to put this situation behind us, to be able to work together as a country and to focus on the future development of our country; on healing, on reconciliation, and ensuring that we are able to achieve, for our people the prospects that they have always desired and dreamed without this huge dark cloud that has been hanging over us for the past seven years,” Uhuru said.
Uhuru outrightly called ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda “a liar” for accusing the Kenyan government of lack of cooperation and witness interference that saw 17 prosecution witnesses withdraw from testifying.
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Uhuru’s declaration comes barely hours after Bensouda herself issued a lengthy statement on the no-case-to-answer ruling issued by the presiding bench of the court.
She said the Kenyan government, a signatory to the Rome statute that brought the ICC into existence acted contrary to the spirit of justice for the victims of the 2007-08 post poll chaos.
“Prosecutions before the ICC can stand or fall on the willingness of witnesses to come forward and tell their story. In this case, 17 witnesses who had agreed to testify against the Accused subsequently withdrew their cooperation,” Bensouda said.
“Prosecution witnesses in this case were subjected to intimidation, social isolation and threats to prevent them from testifying. In the end, the Trial Chamber was in effect prevented from having the opportunity to assess the true merits of the Prosecution case.”
Bensouda said her office is in the process of determining the next course of action by the lifeline the court presented when it refused to give an acquittal of the cases.
“Notwithstanding the challenges my Office has faced in this case, we remain firm in our pursuit of international criminal justice,” Bensouda said.
ICC judges on Tuesday said ‘troubling incidences’ of witness tampering and ‘intolerable’ political meddling led them to declare a mistrial in the cases against DP Ruto and Sang.
They did not, however, stop Bensouda from re-prosecuting the two for the 2007/08 post-election violence at a later date.
The judges said the prosecution has not presented sufficient evidence that could link Ruto and Sang to the crimes they were being accused of.
“As there is insufficient evidence to support the individual elements, no reasonable Trial Chamber could conclude the alleged elements prove the existence of the network or the common plan,” the judges said.
Judge Herrera Carbuccia appended a dissenting opinion. In her view, the charges against both accused should not be vacated in the present case as such outcome departs from the legal standard.
“The Prosecution case had not ‘broken down’ and she concluded that there is sufficient evidence upon which, if accepted, a reasonable Trial Chamber could convict the accused,” Judge Carbuccia said.
They said the charges are ‘vacated and the accused discharged from the process, without prejudice to the presumption of innocence or the Prosecutor’s right to re-prosecute the case at a later time’.