For four days of hearings this week in the trial of Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang, the new buildings of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have been the scene of the same ballet. A few minutes before the opening, a convoy of Mercedes stopped in front of the Court and the Deputy President emerged. Then, surrounded by his lawyers, bodyguards and MPs come from Nairobi for the occasion, a short, improvised prayer in the hall, as if to motivate the team before the hearings. The two men, charged with crimes against humanity in violence that followed the December 2007 presidential elections, are asking the Court to acquit them. Their lawyers say there is no need to call witnesses in response to those presented by the Prosecution since September 2013 because the case has collapsed. The Prosecutor disagrees.<\/p>\n
If it were a football match, the player of the day would undoubtedly be Canadian-Nigerian presiding judge Chile Eboe-Osuji. The judge has relentlessly delivered blows to all the players in the case, starting with prosecutor Anton Steinberg. Steinberg alleges that Ruto set up a network of dignitaries in the Rift Valley to plan the attacks that followed the 2007 presidential polls. Ruto\u2019s party, the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) supported mostly by Luos and his ethnic group the Kalenjins, had lost the vote to the party of incumbent president Mwai Kibaki. Ruto is said to have paid young people gathered to \u201cexpel the Kikuyus\u201d, one of Kenya\u2019s biggest ethnic groups perceived as supporting Kibaki\u2019s Party of National Unity (PNU). \u00a0Prosecution witnesses said that \u201ceuphemisms were used\u201d in these meetings. The tools are alleged to have been firearms, and, according to Steinberg, \u201cfirearms are not needed to win elections\u201d. According to the Prosecution, youth militia were ready to target the Kikuyus as soon as the election results were announced. Kalenjins who supported the presidential party were accused of being traitors and forced to pay fines, like one witness who said he had to hand over his livestock to the attackers.<\/p>\n
The presiding judge asked constantly for evidence to support these claims and wanted to see them in front of him. \u201cDid Mr. Ruto say himself that they needed to get rid of the Kikuyus?\u201d he asked. \u201cI don\u2019t remember that,\u201d the prosecutor answered, \u201cbut there were some very violent words.\u201d<\/p>\n
What evidence is there of improvised courts to try the Kalenjins? \u201cOverall, the evidence points to several facts,\u201d said the prosecutor, who preferred to evoke Ruto\u2019s authority over his community. \u201cHe is described as a king,\u201d he told the court. Then, when the prosecutor said the Kalenjin king had sent cash to pay the attackers, the presiding judge asked him for evidence that it was a gift of thanks. This seems to be a supposition on the prosecution\u2019s part. Anton Steinberg also spoke of scarification ceremonies organized when the attackers returned. \u201cIn African culture, you organize a scarification ceremony to absolve you,\u201d Judge Eboe-Osuji said. \u201cLike in the Catholic Church. You say an Our Father and then you depart as clean as the day was born!\u201d \u201cYes, there are all kinds of cultural practices,\u201d replied Steinberg, as if to suggest that this time perhaps the judge\u2019s remark was inappropriate. \u00a0<\/p>\n
On the second day of hearings, it was the turn of lawyers for Joshua Sang, a former presenter for commercial radio Kass FM, to plead acquittal. Joshua Sang was not a member of a network which, said Joseph Kigen-Katwa, had never existed. He said the ICC was not made to judge cases concerning mafia and arms trafficking. If there was no network, the Kenyan lawyer argued, \u201cthen the Court has no mandate\u201d. \u00a0\u201cSo for you, it is excluded to look at gangs and mafia?\u201d asked the judge. If there was no network, the crimes were committed in a political context and so they are common law crimes, not crimes against humanity, the lawyer argued in essence.<\/p>\n
But the judge came back at him again. The words \u201cvermin\u201d and \u201cweeds\u201d were heard on Kass FM referring to Kikuyus, said Judge Eboe-Osuji. \u201cEven if such words were used, that was freedom of expression, and I don\u2019t think they are criminal,\u201d replied the lawyer, who cited two Western political figures to support his argument. \u201cLook at Donald Trump [a leading contender to be Republican candidate in US elections] calling Latinos rapists and drug traffickers,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Geert Wilders [head of a Dutch extreme-Right party] says all kinds of things about Muslims.\u201d Joshua Sang\u2019s words were a lot milder than that, says his lawyer.<\/p>\n
It was then lawyer Caroline Buisman who took up the baton. She said that even if there was offensive language, which she contests, that does not mean if was criminal. She said a clear link needed to be proven between the radio programmes broadcast and the alleged crimes. The Judge suggested that the tense situation in Kenya should have led to prudence in the choice of words used by the media.<\/p>\n
It was then the turn of Ruto\u2019s defence team. Ruto, after three days in the box, looked tired. But not his lawyer Karim Khan, who attacked the quality of the prosecution\u2019s investigation and claimed the scenario it had put forward was pure fiction, \u201ca good film, in the language of Hollywood\u201d.<\/p>\n
The British lawyer, wearing a Masai bracelet on his wrist, reminded the Court that many prosecution witnesses had retracted their original statements and that the key witness had withdrawn. The prosecution says the witnesses were intimidated and bribed, and has issued arrest warrants against people accused of obstructing the course of justice. But the lawyer claimed that the testimonies heard by the Court proved nothing and that the network organigram presented by the Prosecutor at the start of the case had crumbled. If there is no proof that there were meetings to plan the crimes, it is because \u201cthe 2007-2008 violence was spontaneous\u201d, he said. Meetings from which Ruto was absent, according to the Defence, whereas the Prosecutor, map in hand, says that he could travel quickly from Nairobi to the Rift Valley. \u201cSo now the prosecution is using maps!\u201d said Khan. \u201cThey are indeed desperate.\u201d Steinberg replied that the Defence had also \u201cused Google maps whenever they chose\u201d.<\/p>\n
A decision is expected in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
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For four days of hearings this week in the trial of Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang, the new buildings of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have been the scene of the same ballet. A few minutes before the opening, a convoy of Mercedes stopped in front of the Court and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":67190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[562],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2299],"class_list":["post-25460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-icc","ji_location-kenya"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n