Higher Education minister William Ruto meets journalists after the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation workshop in Nairobi, December 2, 2010. Photo/STEPHEN MUDIARI
By JACOB NG’ETICH jngetich@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Friday, December 3 2010 at 22:30
Suspended Higher Education minister William Ruto now says he is ready to face ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in court if he believes he has enough evidence to implicate him.
Mr Ruto said on Friday that he is not scared of appearing before the International Criminal Court to face his accusers and interrogate their evidence.
“I am ready to face anybody in court anywhere, any day anytime. My conscience is clear, and I only pity those very wicked people who want to see me go through this for their own selfish reasons,” he said during an interview with Saturday Nation.
He spoke as Mr Moreno-Ocampo warned that he would prosecute anyone interfering with witnesses.
He said in a statement dated on Friday: “The Office of the Prosecutor has learnt that in Kenya, families of those believed to be ICC witnesses have been threatened. This is happening after the Prosecutor announced yesterday that he will present two cases against 6 individuals for the crimes committed during the post electoral violence in the next two weeks.
“The Prosecutor is identifying those who are organising such threats and will eventually request arrest warrants for individuals who persist on such threats.
“Those who believe they may be suspects should defend themselves in a court of law, not by threatening or interfering with witnesses. These threats will not stop the presentation of the cases.”
Mr Ruto’s statement came a day after Mr Moreno-Ocampo affirmed that in the next two weeks he is filing two cases against six individuals he describes as the most responsible in the post election violence that the General Election in December 2007.
He said, however, that if Mr Moreno-Ocampo is relying on the Kenya National Human Rights Commission report as well as that from the Philip Waki-led commission on Post Election Violence investigations as background to his evidence then he has no case.
Mr Ruto has already poked holes into the two reports and especially hanging to the fact that two witnesses of the commission has come out claiming they were bribed and coached to give evidence implicating him (Ruto).
Mr Ocampo on Wednesday however disowned the two as his witnesses saying that he has done his own investigations and has a new set of evidence and his own set of witnesses.
But on Friday Mr Ruto claimed that those who have already alleged the bribery claims now allege that the witnesses Mr Moreno-Ocampo is protecting were in the same team and was coached as well.
“They are on record saying that the witnesses now under the ICC protection were in the same class. What credibility is there now in their evidence,” argued Mr Ruto.
In a telephone interview with the two witnesses who left the witness protection programme last month said they were in constant touch with ICC throught during the period they were in the programme.
Mr Brazziz Wekesa said that they had even exchanged mails and telephone calls with the ICC and wondered how the ICC prosecutor distanced himself from them.
Evidence against six
“When we were in the protection programme, we engaged with the ICC and there is no way Mr Ocampo can turn around today and claim that we are not credible, it is only that we decided to follow our conscience and get out otherwise we would still be the witnesses?” said Mr Wekesa in the interview.
On Thursday, Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo promised to expose the masterminds of the post-election violence in two weeks.
His investigators, he said, had enough evidence against six individuals and will submit two cases before the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber III by December 17.
The persons involved could be summoned as early as February next year. The applications, he said, will be detailed in two 80-page documents that will link the crimes against humanity to six individuals suspected to have either planned or financed the violence.
However, he said he will not request the ICC judges to issue arrest warrants for the six individuals but would seek summons for them to appear before The Hague.
However, he said he will not request the ICC judges to issue arrest warrants for the six individuals but would seek summons for them to appear before The Hague.
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