10 November 2013
Our mole at the ICC camp who has been eavesdropping for us has confirmed growing fears that Ruto is panicking over the performance of his chief advocate Karim Khan.
In simple language, Karim Khan was the chief counsel for Charles Taylor’s special appeal, he lost it and Charles Taylor was handed 50 years in maximum security jail. Further, Karim Khan has never won any major legal battles.
This is shocking, we understand. But remember that Ruto chose this guy because he had positioned himself as an international lawyer with great credentials in UN international tribunals.
Ruto, our mole told us “is regretting deeply having appointed this man and wants to fire him but it is too late.”
It is said that there have been spiffs and spurts which threaten to spill into the court as Ruto increasingly begins to question the performance of his lawyer Karim Khan.
During breaks Ruto and Karim Khan have been seen quarreling and having words.
In what might be termed as anxiety attacks and panics, an increasingly terrified Ruto nearly fired Karim Khan.
This happened soon after the last week of September when Charles Taylor lost his appeal against a war-crimes conviction on Thursday as judges confirmed a 50-year jail term against the Liberian ex-president for encouraging rebels in Sierra Leone to mutilate, rape and murder victims in its civil war.
Presiding Judge George Gelaga King said Taylor had aided and abetted crimes committed by Revolutionary United Front and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council rebels, advising and assisting them while knowing well the kinds of crimes they were committing.
The main reason why Ruto panicked so much, our source has confirmed is because he now sees himself facing the same fate as Charles Taylor, whom special chief counsel Karim Khan was not able to save.
The reality that he could be jailed has led to such panic that “Ruto is not acting himself” according to our source. “He used to be very calm knowing that there were not many witnesses to speak up against him. But Taylor was convicted on the testimony of only one witness, so obviously we are worried.”
According to our mole, Ruto is also increasingly worried about where he would spend his jail term if it came to that. Charles Taylor is not serving his term at the comfortable Hague hotel-like jail with all amenities. Instead, Britain has agreed Taylor can serve his sentence at one of its maximum-security prisons but Anyah said Taylor hoped to serve his term in Finland, Sweden or Rwanda – the other three countries which have enforcement agreements with the court..
“What is clear is that there is no choice for the convictee of where they should serve. Ruto is worried about the Guantanamo Bay since that’s where the USA which is very interested in this matter takes all terror suspects.”
But the biggest worry for Ruto and why he nearly fired his chief counsel Karim Khan is because Mr. Karim while very combative has never won any major legal battles. He has the propensity to make stinging remarks to tear apart the prosecution’s case as he fights to have his client cleared of charges of crimes against humanity.
“There is a rotten underbelly of this case that the prosecutor has swallowed hook, line, and sinker, indifferent to the truth, all too eager to latch on to any version, any account, any story that somehow ticks the boxes that we have to tick in relation to putting forward a summons or putting forward a confirmation hearing, completing an IDAC (in-depth analysis) chart,” Khan said in his opening statement in defence of Mr Ruto on Tuesday.
Despite his combativeness and witty remarks, the bread is in the pudding. And Karim Khan has no giant legal wins under his belt.
Lawyers interviewed in Nairobi had only one question to pose to us:
“Who in this world doesn’t know that Karim Khan has never won any legal battle?”
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