Right To Reply
My attention has been drawn to an article appearing in the Star issue of August 12, 2013, titled “The ICC witnesses were not coached’.
Deputy President William Ruto told the International Criminal Court that the case he is facing at The Hague is a ‘syndicate of lies’ and concoction by those opposed to justice and truth. It is wrong for the writer to claim that no witness was ever coached and yet he is among those accused of having participated in the coaching process.
The writer’s claims that the evidence presented at different levels of the PEV investigations were done by the witnesses voluntarily as civic obligation to help the country get justice are baseless.
The truth of the matter is that Wafula played a key role in coaching the witnesses because he was in most cases opposed to the leadership of Ruto while serving as Eldoret North MP since Wafula is a resident of the constituency.
The differences that he had with Ruto saw Wafula and other human rights groups to coach the witnesses with the aim of ensuring Ruto was completely locked out of politics.
It is because of this reason among others that the claims that eight witnesses in the case involving Ruto are liars must not be taken lightly by the ICC. The United Nations Security Council, the ICC presidency and the international community must have by now found that there exists a reasonable cause to warrant an urgent review of the Kenyan ICC cases.
It has become clear that the cases involving President Uhuru Kenyatta, his Deputy William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang have taken a political dimension and need for the UN Security Council to urgently dispense justice by petitioning ICC to either terminate charges against the three or start fresh investigations.
For instance the move by Ruto’s lawyers to make application to ICC over eight witnesses they deem to be liars shows that more needs to be done to establish the real culprits behind the 2008 post election violence.
ICC should be made to understand that some NGOs in Kenya and human rights groups coached witnesses to testify against Ruto and this should not be taken for granted.
But the move to have the cases terminated or started a fresh is inspired by the incomprehensible surreptitious conduct of the ICC prosecutor in dealing with the Kenya case.
Bensouda’s predecessor Moreno Ocampo failed to independently investigate the Kenyan situation to build the case which is based on conjecture and speculation by coached witnesses and which is currently falling apart.
The ICC should be made to understand that Ocampo had allegedly presented to the court ‘a flawed case full of fiction and lies packaged from a restaurant in Kenya .’
ICC should therefore investigate claims that the eight witnesses in Ruto’s case were coached to lie before the judges. The United Nations Security Council, The ICC President and the International community must have by now found that there exists a reasonable cause to warrant urgent investigations.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment