The Times
Jerome Starkey in Nairobi
A civil servant accused of crimes against humanity alongside Kenya’s future president will no longer face trial in The Hague after prosecutors dropped all charges against him yesterday.
Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, said too many witnesses were either dead or scared of testifying for there to be a reasonable chance of conviction.
“This is an exceptional decision,” she said yesterday. “I did not take it lightly, but I believe it is the right thing to do.”
Francis Muthaura was the head of Kenya’s civil service in 2007, when ethnic clashes after a presidential election left more than 1,100 people dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
He was due to stand trial in July, alongside Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s founding president who won a majority in last week’s fraught presidential poll by 0.07 per cent.
Both men were facing five charges of crimes against humanity for orchestrating the ethnic clashes which forced more than 600,000 people to flee their homes in 2007 and 2008.
“While we are all aware of the political developments in Kenya, these have no influence at all on the decision that I make as prosecutor,” Ms Bensouda added.
“This decision applies only to Mr Muthaura. It does not apply to any other case.”
Nonetheless, her decision to drop charges so close to the trial date will bolster Mr Kenyatta, who used his case as a campaign tool, by portraying it as unwelcome foreign meddling. It follows an earlier admission from the ICC that a key witness had been discredited.
“Given the new status Uhuru Kenyatta Kenyatta has, it looks like a capitulation,” said Mugambi Kiai, a Nairobi based human rights lawyer.
“But that would be reading the book by its cover. We mustn’t underestimate Bensouda.” (Read more...)
