How President Uhuru Kenyatta ended up at The Hague

By WAHOME THUKU

During the 2007 General Election, Uhuru Kenyatta was not a presidential candidate. He was not even a member of the top contending political parties PNU and ODM. He was the official opposition leader, a post that put him in an awkward position for supporting President Kibaki’s bid for a second term.

During the Post-Election Violence that followed the announcement of the presidential results, Uhuru teamed up with other Central Kenya leaders who drove around parts of Nairobi, Kiambu and Naivasha, calming down their supporters and appealing to them not to engage in violence.

In some of the pictures recorded then and produced at the International Criminal Court (ICC) , Uhuru was captured riding on an open vehicle addressing crowds of youth urging them to remain calm.

Other probes

However, according to other investigations said to have been conducted by the security intelligence and human rights bodies that was only a smoke screen. Behind the scenes, Uhuru would allegedly be meeting Mungiki youths and organising them to retaliate the killings of PNU supporters in parts of the Rift Valley, according to the ICC prosecution. 

After Parliament had failed to pass a motion to constitute a local tribunal, a report on the investigations into the PEV by a commission led by Justice Philip Waki was handed over to chief mediator Koffi Annan, the former UN secretary General who then handed it over to the then ICC Prosecutor Louis Moreno Ocampo.

The prosecutor applied for permission from the ICC to commence investigations into the Kenyan situation basing his grounds on the report in what is commonly known as the Waki envelope. The request was granted on March 31, 2010.

Following his own investigations, Ocampo identified six persons against whom he claimed there were sufficient grounds to believe they bore the highest responsibility over the violence. One of them was Uhuru, then Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

Ocampo submitted an application to the court on December 15, that year for the six to be summoned before the ICC, for the court to make that finding.

The following year the Pre-Trial Chamber II granted the application and summoned Uhuru, the then Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura and Police Commissioner Hussein Ali.

However one judge Peter Kaul dissented saying the charges did not meet the threshold of the Rome Statute to be heard by the ICC The confirmation of charges hearing for the Uhuru case was conducted between September 21 and October 5, 2011. The three faced charges of being perpetrators of murder, deportation or forcible transfer or persons, rape, persecution, and other inhumane acts during the PEV.

According to Ocampo the crimes were committed by PNU leaders and Mungiki sect members with the protection of the police.

“These preliminary conclusions are coming from many information, public reports produced by Human Rights Watch, the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights, the Commission of Inquiry into the Post  Election Violence CIPEV, and the Kenyan National Security and Intelligence Service reports,” the told the Chamber. Ocampo zeroed in on