Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kenyatta at the ICC: Is Justice Deferred, Ju...

Dear m. Owino:

Tribal-based politics is not unique to Kenya. I hope you are insinuating that Kenyatta's election was illegitimate. Voters, even in the most enlightened democracies, vote for candidates for a lot of reasons, some of which may include ethnic or racial affinity. In the United States, where racial-based politics has been a pervasive part of the country's more than 200 years of existence, a black man was still able to ascend to the highest position in the government despite the fact that members of his "tribe" (I.e., blacks) are in the minority.

Based on your four points, it appears that Kenya should call the British to return and govern the country because they (Kenyans) are never going to be able to do it themselves.

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014, Meshack Owino <meshack.owino@yahoo.com> wrote:

Let me bring up three or four points on this issue:

i) On the argument that "Kenyans" elected Uhuru Kenyatta as president:

Kenya is a deeply ethnically divided country. It is a well-known fact, sad as it may be, that Kenyans routinely vote for presidential candidates along ethnic lines during election. An analysis of elections in Kenya must therefore take into account the role of ethnicity. I don't want to go into this in detail. I will just leave it there. But I ask you to think about it.

ii) On the issue of home-grown justice:

Let me give a short list of very prominent Kenyans who have been assassinated, and to this date nobody has been held accountable for their deaths:

     Pio Gama Pinto -- 1965

     Paul Mboya -- 1969

    JM Kariuki -- 1975

    Owiti Ongili and Otieno Ambala -- 1986

    Robert Ouko -- 1990

    Odhiambo Mbai -- 2003

This is just a short list of assassinations that have taken place in Kenya since independence. There are countless other Kenyans who have been gunned down in broad daylight, and their murders have not been solved to this date. Others have been hounded into exile, and/or have been arrested and incarcerated on trumped up charges by the powers that be, and their tormentors have never been held to account to this date.

Given the above history of Kenya, can we really expect Kenya to be able to hold the powerful and the rich like Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto accountable for anything?

Let me ask the question another way: is there even one single example of a rich and powerful Kenyan who has ever been held accountable for any crime in Kenya? If so, which one?

iii) On the question of the alleged lack of evidence against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto in their cases at the ICC:

If Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are truly innocent of the crimes they are accused of by the ICC, why is it then that most of the witnesses against them have either been shot to death, sometimes in broad daylight; chosen to "withdraw" from the cases; or have all of a sudden developed "memory lapses" and refused to testify against the accused? 

And why would innocent suspects expend so much political, financial, and diplomatic capital campaigning against standing trial for crimes they claim to be innocent of?

iv) On the question of outsourcing the prosecution of African cases to external actors:

This appears to have only started becoming an issue when some big, prominent, powerful Kenyans were charged by the ICC in connection to the post-election violence. The question is why only then, and not before?

Up until the Kenyan cases went to the ICC, Africans did not seem to have any problem with external actors helping to prosecute the Rwanda Genocide cases; the Charles Taylor case; the Bemba case; and so on. Indeed, the majority of the African cases at the ICC were taken there by African leaders themselves. Among some of these cases are of those who prefer to be tried by the ICC to their own judicial systems, for example, Bosco Ntaganda of Congo. And there are many examples like that of Bosco Ntaganda.

Indeed, coming back to the Kenyan post-election violence cases, let us not forget that it was not the ICC that came to Kenya to try the cases as some people might think; it was Kenya that went to the ICC. Kenyan leaders took the cases to the ICC to prosecute. They even coined the phrase, "Don't be Vague, Go to The Hague," to emphasize their determination to have the cases tried by the ICC rather than by their own discredited judicial system. 

That is all.

Meshack Owino.

----------------------

From: John Mbaku <jmbaku@weber.edu>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "kenyaonline@yahoogroups.com" <kenyaonline@yahoogroups.com>; africa-oped@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 3:19 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kenyatta at the ICC: Is Justice Deferred, Ju...

I have a different take on the issue of the ICC and President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya. The people of Kenya elected Uhuru Kenyatta to govern them and he is accountable to them and not to some unelected body in The Hague. If there is to be a trial of President Kenyatta, it should be carried out by the people of Kenya through their legal and judicial systems. If the ICC wants to help improve the system of justice in Kenya, it should help Kenyans develop the necessary legal and judicial mechanisms to hold their leaders and any other individuals accused of crimes accountable. Justice should be delivered locally and not outsourced to some external agency thousands of miles away from where the crimes are alleged to have been committed. 

I know that some supporters of the ICC are likely to argue that Kenya is currently either unwilling or unable to undertake the necessary prosecutions and that the ICC must intervene to prevent injustice. My answer is that we should determine the reasons for the inaction on the part of the Kenyan legal system and cure them rather than outsource the job to external actors, be they the ICC or some other organization such as the UN Security Council.

We, Africans, must assert our independence by developing the capacities to deal effectively and fully with our own problems. 

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 11:47 AM, <MsJoe21St@aol.com> wrote:

Most people will prefer a cerebral approach to a court case and evidence is paramount. Maybe your  visceral " jittery "  is due to the fact that you missed where the ICC admitted that its evidence does not rise to a hill of beans? So why are you smelling rats?

 

 http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2013/12/i-no-longer-have-case-against-uhuru-bensouda/

 

 

In a message dated 1/27/2014 7:00:16 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, mystock@ymail.com writes:

I am getting a little jittery over the repeated delays, postponements and all the backpedalling talk about “false evidence” and “lying witnesses” in the Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta International Criminal court trial. I don’t want to say I smell a rat but I feel like I am getting a whiff. Is the stage being set to let Kenyatta off the ICC hook?

There has been feverish efforts to defer, delay and dismiss Kenyatta’s prosecution as a sitting head of state since January 2012 when the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber confirmed charges against him. In May 2013, Kenya’s Ambassador to the U.N. Macharia Kamau filed a 13-page “Confidential” letter with the President of the UN Security Council seeking to take the Kenyatta case out of ICC hands and directing it to relinquish jurisdiction to Kenyan courts. In the same month, Hailemariam Desalegn, the ceremonial prime minister of Ethiopia and rotational chairman of the African Union, went on the warpath accusing the ICC of going on an African safari “race hunting” black African leaders. In June 2013, the ICC delayed Kenyatta’s trial until November 12 having determined Kenyatta’s defense team needs adequate time to prepare for trial. In September 2013, Hailemariam formally demanded that the ICC drop charges against both Kenyatta and Ruto. At the 68th UN General Assembly, Hailemariam hectored that the ICC is undermining the “ability of the Kenyan leaders in discharging their constitutional responsibilities” and that dropping the charges “is very critical to support the peace building and national reconciliation processes in [Kenya].”Read More

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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
3807 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax

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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
3807 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax

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