ICC Witness: I changed account to implicate William Ruto

By Felix Olick

The Hague, Netherlands: The fourth prosecution witness changed his testimony to implicate Deputy President William Ruto in the 2007/2008 post-election violence after meeting International Criminal Court (ICC) investigators for two days.

The witness, who was an IDP at Eldoret Show Ground, yesterday admitted that he changed his testimony after meeting the international court’s officials between August 8 and 10 last year.

In his initial statement to the prosecution on phone, the witness had said that the violence that rocked Eldoret region was not planned but was spontaneous.

However, after meeting with the prosecution investigators, the witness changed his story insisting that the violence was planned way before the bungled 2007 presidential polls.

“I would have learnt about the plans (planning of the violence). I had friends from various communities and met them on a daily basis,” Ruto’s co-lead Counsel Essa Faal quoted the witness’s initial statement.

But the witness maintained that when he first gave his statement to the investigators, he was in a public place and could not speak freely.

“In my conscience it was bad to tell them that it was planned over the phone in a public place,” the witness told Trial Chamber V judges.

Painted picture

But Faal painted the picture of the witness as a man who only agreed to nail Ruto after being paid by the prosecution investigators.

“When you met the prosecution investigators on August 8 to 10, 2012 did they pay you for all your expenses?” asked the Gambian lawyer as he concluded his cross-examination.

And the witness, only identified as 376, admitted that his travel expenses were catered for.

Last week, during his examination in chief, the witness whose house was also burnt during the bloodletting had described the clashes as ‘a properly arranged fight’.

He maintained that from the manner the attacks were executed, it was evident that the violence was not spontaneous. “It’s at that particular time that people realised it was not a laughing matter and this could have been a properly arranged fight,” he said of the December 31 incident, when the first Kikuyu was killed.

It also emerged during cross-examination yesterday, that in his initial statement, the witness said the burning of houses was random and did not target a particular community. He further told the investigators that his neighbour from a different community other than the Kikuyu also had their house brought down in flames.

He had said there were various ethnic communities that sought refuge at Langas Police Station at the height of the chaos.