ICC cases: We know what they are about
In one Kenyan community, a story is told about two beautiful girls and a madman in the village.It goes like this: Only teenage boys were expected to eat rabbit meat. But one day the crackpot found the two beauties sharing the delicacy with the village boys.He screamed, saying he would go telling everybody about it.
The girls pleaded with him not to do so. He agreed but on condition that any time he showed up at the village dance, the two would take to the floor with him.The girls kept their side of the bargain, leaving everybody marveling why the two beauties would give a dance to, of all people, a madman.Then one day the girls thought they had enough of it and told off the madman when he approached them for a dance. “Just leave us alone!” the girls shouted at the madman and told him to just as well say he once had found them eating rabbit meat. Everybody was so enraged to hear the two had been entertaining the village crackpot on account of blackmail about rabbit meat.
Now, that sounds more like the ICC thing which President Museveni calls blackmail. Here is how it came about: Kenyans killed and displaced fellow citizens in the aftermath of the disputed 2007 presidential elections. A negotiated settlement under a former UN secretary-general agreed that a commission be formed to get to the bottom of the chaos. The commission came up with what was famously referred to as the “envelope”. The envelope which we were told had 20 names of the culprits responsible for the 2007 madness was handed over to a foreigner called Koffi Annan who forwarded it to the ICC. The 20 names were never made public. Next, ICC prosecutor at the time, Luis Moreno Ocampo came to Kenya to investigate and verify contents of the envelope, so we heard.
He was in the country only three times. On the first visit he met then two principals, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, and went back to wherever he had come from. The second time he was flown to Eldoret town on what was called a fact-finding mission and returned to Nairobi the same day. On the third and last visit by the ICC prosecutor, he made an excursion to the Nairobi National Park and was pictured posing next to some cheetah or some other animal. Next, the ICC prosecutor came up with a list of 6 who he said were the main culprits in the 2007 chaos.
We never got to know what happened to the other names in the famous envelope. The ICC court has since cut down the list of Ocampo 6 to 3. Now that the cases are about to begin at The Hague, perhaps it is time whatever evidence there is be laid bare in the style of the two beauties and the rabbit meat
By KAMAU NGOTHO
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