Step aside, Ruto tells rights team

Eldoret MP William Ruto (left) with African Independent Pentecostal Church Archbishop John Mugecha in Tetu on November 14, 2010. Mr Ruto said stepping aside was the only way for the human rights officials to show they were genuine. Photo/ JOSEPH KANYI  

By JOHN NJAGI jnjagi@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Sunday, November 14 2010 at 22:18

Eldoret MP William Ruto has asked human rights commissioners to step aside and pave the way for investigations into claims that they coached witnesses of post-election violence.

Mr Ruto on Sunday said stepping aside was the only way for the officials to show they were genuine. According to him, the move would allow an independent commission to investigate their activities.

The suspended Higher Education minister has accused Hassan Omar Hassan of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights of coaching witnesses to implicate him in the planning of post-election violence.

According to him, this was meant to frustrate his presidential ambitions in 2012.

Mr Ruto also questioned the commission’s calls for the arrest of two witnesses who claimed they were coached by Mr Hassan to name certain politicians.

“It should be Mr Hassan who ought to be arrested first and not the witnesses... He who coached the witnesses committed a greater crime,” he said.

The MP is among prominent Kenyans named in a rights watchdog report as having organised violence that led to post-election mayhem almost three years ago.

That report and another one by the Waki Commissions form part of the evidence pursued by International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in building a case that will lead to the prosecution of post-election violence perpetrators at The Hague after Kenya failed to set up courts to try them.

Mr Ruto also defended his move to present himself at the ICC in The Hague, saying the innocent had nothing to fear.

“When people heard I was heading to The Hague they tried to talk me out of it, but I was motivated by the fact that I am an innocent Kenyan and I am yet to see a court on this earth that prosecutes the innocent,” he said.

Mr Ruto was speaking in Tetu constituency during a fundraiser for the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Kenya.

The legislator said it was unfair for politics of lies to penetrate the ICC process, saying it negated the wish of Kenyans to have ICC investigate post-election violence cases because a local process would be interfered with.

“We chose the ICC because a local process would be compromised. But now the KNCHR, which is supposed to defend other Kenyans is coaching witnesses,” he said.