Imagine Nick Clegg is to stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. I appreciate some Huffington Post readers might see such a case as perfectly reasonable, but also imagine for a moment that the witnesses on which the case rests have been sourced and then coached by members of the Conservative Party. Imagine also the Chief Prosecutor of the case is Jeremy Kyle, a TV judge famous for dishing out on-air justice to the amusement of the masses. Does this all seem reasonable?

Well, this case is actually taking place, but the man on trial is not our Nick but Uhuru Kenyatta, deputy prime minister of Kenya. For the Conservatives in this real-life parable, read the Orange Democratic Movement, the party of the current Kenyan premier Raila Odinga, a man who shares power with Kenyatta in a coalition government.

And our media-friendly ringmaster is Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a man who, before being appointed ICC chief prosecutor was the finger-wagging star of a ludicrous show on Argentinian television called “La Corte del Pueblo”, or The People’s Court.

Ocampo, who has counted footballer Diego Maradona among his clients, has been in the news of late because of the prosecution of Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord. Yet this has been his only completed case since being handed the hallowed ICC post nine years ago – an abysmal record.

Because of his failure, his publicity instincts have kicked in – up to a point. His recent call for the arrest of Joseph Kony (a Ugandan warlord whose Lord’s Resistance Army has been in decline for years) has helped publicly deflect most criticism of his methods. But the conclusion of the Lubanga case has exposed his office as running witness-sourcing and evidence-gathering operations that would not be admissible in a kangaroo court, let alone for a body expected to deliver the highest levels of international justice.

At the Lubanga trial, Britain’s Justice Sir Adrian Fulford tore into Ocampo: decrying his preference for gathering witness statements for the prosecution by remote control; for using local intermediaries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to source witness statements subsequently co-drafted by the ICC; and for coaching witnesses prior to their appearance at trial.

Fulford threw out many of Ocampo’s witness statements, warning that they were at best deeply flawed, due to the seemingly coercive methods through which they were sourced, and at worst the statements of perjurers. He also warned these intermediaries and even people working within Ocampo’s office they may be prosecuted for their actions.

For his part, the ICC’s chief prosecutor has defended the gathering of evidence by proxy, saying (not unreasonably) that since the DRC is too dangerous for ICC officials to visit, the process had to be done locally.

This may be the case in the badlands of the Congo, but Ocampo has employed precisely the same methods in gathering evidence for the Kenyatta case in Nairobi.

Is Kenya similarly dangerous? Prince William thought not, when he chose to propose to the now Duchess of Cambridge on Kenya’s rolling grasslands. Or ask the Prada-clad armies of Chelsea and Cheshire who flock to the country every year in search of safari, wilderness, and their inner selves. Compare this with the dense jungle and dawn patrols of Congo, a country where tourism is only for the stout of heart, or the generally deranged.

There is simply no personal, practical or legal reason why Ocampo and his inner circle could not have gathered witness statements directly, on the ground, in Kenya.

Instead they used intermediaries – such as a local charity branded the “Kenya Human Rights Commission” and another organisation named the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights who were particularly helpful when it came to the witnesses. One of its Commissioners a Mr Omar Hassan it is alleged handily unearthed some of the main witness for the ICC’s prosecution. (One such witness, incidentally, has proven himself to be utterly unreliable, having changed his statement on no fewer than four occasions, including attempting once to retract his statement completely).

Hassan’s good work has not gone unnoticed. He has since been appointed vice chairman of the Friends of Raila, an organisation working to elect Odinga to the Presidency in upcoming elections.

Surely, you would think a witness who has changed his statement on multiple occasions, having been assisted by an intermediary whose intentions were so palpably political, should be dismissed by any reasonable provincial court, let alone the ICC.

Yet the answer to that question would currently seem to be a resounding “No”. There is another player left to introduce in this twisting little tale: none other than our very own Foreign Office.

Our boys over there, who have spent the past decade seeking to rewrite history from the wrong side of the fence, are chipping in the funding for the witness protection scheme for the Kenyan case. Millions of pounds of taxpayer money have been lavished on the ICC case by the Foreign Office. Britons are paying for the ICC’s chief witness to live a life of pleasant anonymity in the United States.

The Foreign Office also seems to rather like Odinga, whose supporters have been so helpful sourcing witnesses. We have rolled out the red carpet for him on three separate official visits to Britain. Since 2007 he has met David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Prince Charles.

Compare that to the number of official visits to the UK afforded to Mwai Kibaki, president of Kenya since 2002: none. We must like Odinga an awful lot.

So what happens next? Many observers are muttering that the Kenyatta case may collapse given the way the evidence has been gathered. Ocampo’s disastrous tenure at the ICC ends in June, after which he will presumably return to Argentina to preside over more televisual gavel-bashing. Justice Fulford, considered by the international legal profession to be a class act, is meanwhile expected to return to Britain, to preside – or so it is rumoured – over Chris Huhne’s speeding trial.

To borrow the old American political saying, one is left with the distinct impression that the Foreign Office has left us carrying a dead chicken around town. Britain has officially, and highly politically, opted to support the incumbent premier of an African state in an election he is unlikely to win. Our boys in the Foreign Office have also tied us to a case that even the ICC, it would appear, doesn’t believe in, thanks to the highly controversial methods of its chief prosecutor.

Perhaps the Kenyan Foreign Office will retaliate and call for a trial of Nick Clegg and fund the witness protection scheme while members of the Conservative Party gather evidence against him. Jeremy Kyle could even preside. Don’t bet against it.

By

Elliot Wilson is a British investigative journalist who writes for The Spectator, The Observer and other international publications

Source: Huffington Post

Jackson Mwangi and James Ndirangu Kuria are asking the High Court to restrain Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, former head of Public Service Francis Muthaura, Eldoret North MP William Ruto and radio presenter Joshua Sang from subjecting themselves to the ICC process or receiving its summons pending hearing of their application.

They want the court to enjoin the Office of the Public Prosecutor at the ICC as a respondent, and the four accused Kenyans as interested parties in the application.

High Court judge Isaac Lenaola Friday directed them to serve all those affected, including the accused four, with the application. It will be heard on April 26.

The applicants, whose petition challenging the Rome Statute is also pending in court, are seeking the orders pending determination of the petition.

They will be in court on May 18 to take a date for hearing of the petition, which claims that the Rome Statute that created the ICC is in conflict with Kenya’s Constitution.

ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno- Ocampo accuses Mr Kenyatta, Mr Ruto, Mr Muthaura and Mr Sang of being responsible for the 2007/2008 post-election violence which left 1,133 Kenyans dead and displaced 650,000 from their homes.

Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta have declared that they are in contention for the presidency in the next General Election.

Their trial at the ICC may begin in the next few months following confirmation of the charges against them and appointment of judges to handle the Kenyan cases.

Mr Mwangi and Mr Ndirangu’s suit could have a bearing on the ICC process; they want the court to declare that it was unlawful for the Waki Commission, which investigated the chaos, to conceal names of persons believed to bear the greatest responsibility for the violence.

They want the court to compel the Office of the Prosecutor to release to them all the names contained in a sealed envelope that the Waki Commission handed over to Chief Mediator Kofi Annan.

The applicants argue that the names have never been disclosed to the public or the Waki Commission’s appointing authority.

They say that they want the names to be disclosed to them to enable them prosecute the application competently, arguing that their right to information is protected by the Constitution.

The former UN Secretary-General handed over the envelope to the ICC when Kenya failed to establish a local mechanism to try the perpetrators of the post-election violence.

Mr Justice David Majanja ruled that Mr Githongo’s petition to have the orders lifted was an abuse of the court process and a collateral attack on the directions issued by another judge.

“I cannot interfere or declare that the orders issued by Justice Pauline Nyamweya to stop the demonstrations were unjustified. The court has to adopt a liberal approach and guard itself against parties creating parallel and multiple petitions,” ruled Mr Justice Majanja.

By dismissing Mr Githongo’s application, the judge reinforced an order the MP obtained in January restraining the former Ethics and Governance PS from leading a demonstration over his alleged link to drug trafficking.

Mr Mwau claimed that Mr Githongo and other civil society activists had planned a series of demonstrations across the country against him for six months, and that the intended actions are criminal because they will threaten his life and ground his businesses.

He submitted that the intention of the activists was to provoke President Kibaki into ordering the police to intervene in a brutal manner, which would prompt the White House to ask the Head of State to give the demonstrators a free hand.

The court also ordered Mr Githongo to reveal to Mr Mwau and the court the US contacts he mentioned in writing a note titled “We the people therapy on narcotic traffickers in Kenya”.

However, the former Ethics and Governance PS filed a constitutional petition claiming that the suit by Mr Mwau was meant to intimidate and harass him and other activists in order to silence and prevent them from expressing their views on issues relating to drug trafficking in Kenya.

He submitted that the proceedings filed by Mr Mwau are a violation of their fundamental rights and freedoms of assembly, expression, opinion, demonstration, free media and security as guaranteed in articles 29, 32, 34 and 37 of the Constitution.

The activists wanted the orders to be lifted.

Source: Daily Nation

Police Spokesman Eric Kiraithe said that the Limuru 2B meeting was cancelled after police received complaints that gangs of the illegal Mungiki were extorting money from matatu operators and small business traders in parts of Central and Rift Valley to finance the meeting.

He told a news conference that the meeting was also meant to install a former sect leader as the political leader of Central region.

“Further information supplied by the complainants was that the plan was to use the proscribed Mungiki criminal gang to ensure that voters from the Mt Kenya region are intimidated to vote in a bloc as directed by the organised criminal gang kingpin. It became apparent that the meeting was intended to achieve unlawful purpose and the organisers were immediately notified of the cancellation,” the Police Spokesman said.

Kiraithe however called on the police to always act within the law and not use excessive force as witnessed on during the Wednesday incident.

“We do not want to take on individual acts which might have been unprofessional by police officers. We have carried out a lot of training, a lot of people have spoken on the need to observe democratic principles of governance and human rights and really it is not our expectation that a police officer should use excessive force especially when the person to be arrested has already been subdued,” he said.

Earlier on Prime Minister Raila Odinga had ordered Internal Security Minister George Saitoti to take immediate action against the Commissioner of Police Matthew Iteere and all Provincial Administration officials who were involved in violent dispersal of the anti GEMA youth in Limuru.

In a statement, the PM said that the police had failed to protect the rights of the conveners of the meeting by using teargas and live ammunition to disperse them.

But the Police Spokesman maintained that it was the role of the police to discourage any kind of conduct or statements which cause anxiety, heightened ethnic suspiciousness or any groupings which may be used for such purpose.

“In the new constitutional dispensation, it was the expectation of the police that if the organisers were aggrieved by this decision, they would proceed to the reformed Judiciary to give police an opportunity to justify the cancellation of the meeting in a court of law,” Kiraithe stated.

He added: “Unfortunately, some of the organisers displayed the culture of impunity and instead opted to engage in riots forcing police officers to take action.”

On the claims by Gem MP Jakoyo Midiwo that there was a plot by some members of government to assassinate Prime Minsiter Raila Odinga, Kiraithe said police had completed investigations and the file forwarded to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

“In regard to Honorable Gitobu Imanyara’s allegations in parliament (that his life was in danger), he has already recorded a statement with us and investigations are ongoing,” he said.

He said police had attached bodyguards to all Members of Parliament to provide all time protection.

Source: http://www.capitalfm.co.ke

The Orange Democratic Movement,   ODM is the latest major party to experience registration difficulties.

Addressing a news conference in Parliament buildings Thursday, the MPs said they had already spoken to Prime Minister and his deputy, and that their counsel, was a call to dialogue.

“We are convinced that moving to any other political party will certainly not be in his best interests or beneficial to the people of Western,” said Cabinet minister Wycliffe Oparanya, who read the joint statement.

“We’re making all efforts to ensure that we stay together.”

MPs Fred Gumo (Westlands), Alfred Sambu (Webuye), Sospeter Ojaamong (Amagoro), Benjamin Washiali (Mumias), Ababu Namwamba (Budalang’i), Evans Akula (Khwisero), Alfred Odhiambo (Butula), Wilberforce Otichillo (Emuhaya) and Alfred Khang’ati (Kanduyi) atended the news conference.

But two MPs Paul Otuoma (Funyula) and David Were (Matungu) whose names were appended in the statement, did not show up, and the explanation was that they “are on the way, they were stuck in traffic”.

The MPs, together with their colleagues from other parties, met Mr Mudavadi on Tuesday, to “consult” on his political future. After the meeting, Mr Mudavadi said he was going on with consultations about his next step. He promised to hold a meeting in Kakamega this weekend at which a major announcement would be made.

On Thursday, the MPs allied to ODM, through Mr Sambu, said the Kakamega meeting was a “councillors’ meeting” and any MP was free to attend.

Mr Oparanya added that Mr Mudavadi “should tread with caution and listen keenly to the counsel within the party, and be careful with the push from outsiders motivated by their personal interests with the intention of isolating him and rocking our party, ODM”.

Cabinet minister Fred Gumo added that Mr Mudavadi should not hit the road because the race for the presidency was not for the “faint-hearted”.

“If Musalia wants to be President, we’re telling him that he can do it through ODM… if he fights for it and wins within ODM, he’ll be assured of the presidency, because, that will be easy,” said Mr Gumo.

“In politics, we need strong leaders, we don’t need weaklings,” said Mr Gumo.

Mr Gumo said the politicians who had left ODM have been flashing around the “lack of democracy excuse” to all and sundry, yet ODM was the “most democratic party.”

“We began this party, we’re the owners of this party,” said Mr Gumo, who is an MP of Westlands in Nairobi county.

He said Mr Odinga’s management style was not dictatorial.

“The only problem is when people develop their own ambitions, they develop cold feet; they think they can’t fight him, and therefore they run away. Have you ever heard that Mr Odinga has forced anything on us?” posed Mr Gumo.

However, Mr Gumo added, that should Mr Mudavadi make good his threat to quit ODM, then, he (Gumo) would make a decision on the next step.

“Mr Mudavadi has many delegates who’re supporting him. But listen up, if he leaves, I will make a decision, an individual decision as an MP. I am not anyone’s wife. I am a husband of many wives. I make my own decision as an MP. If I think he’s made the right decision, I will follow him,” said Mr Gumo.

The ODM MPs are playing a dicey game with their supporters on the ground, because, some of them are afraid of sticking to Mr Mudavadi lest he loses, or sticking with the Prime Minister, and be seen as abandoning one of their own. That, is why, they have found a safe middle-ground in speaking for the party.

They told Mr Mudavadi that his worries about a level playing field were being addressed.

“Indeed Mr Mudavadi has a bright future, but that future will shine brightest within the ODM house,” said Mr Namwamba, who’s the spokesman of ODM MPs in Parliament.

The MPs said they were not aware of any anomalies in their list of supporters submitted to the Registrar of Political Parties.

In a statement, secretary general Anyang’ Nyong’o dismissed the reports that ODM had been denied full registration.

“The information being circulated in the media that the Registrar of Political Parties has refused to register the ODM is false, malicious and stupid,” he said.

Safaricom, in which Britain’s Vodafone has a 40 percent stake, has a big lead over rivals such as the local unit of France Telecom, but its network has been struggling with fluctuating data speeds and dropped calls.

“The next set of investments is going to be around fibre because we have major dependency on fibre,” Bob Collymore told the Reuters Africa Investment Summit.

“The data tsunami will come and it will come maybe 12 months or 18 months from now,” he said.

Safaricom expects a surge in demand for data services in the east African nation of 40 million people, thanks to an explosion of Internet-ready, hand-held devices, an increase in the number of relevant applications and content.

It also sees Kenya positioned as a possible information technology hub for the entire continent.

Safaricom, which has 5 million data users and 17 million mobile phone subscribers, currently relies on other carriers that have their own fibre networks.

Speaking at the Reuters office in Nairobi, Collymore said the move would improve the firm’s services as it will result in the replacement of old cables and those that have been spliced during road construction.

It will take two to three years and involve partnerships with other operators, Collymore said.

“The industry needs to work on sharing infrastructure. We are looking at what would be a sensible model for us so we can do it twice as quickly and at half the cost,” he said.

MOBILE MONEY

Collymore said Safaricom was also seeking new opportunities for its pioneer mobile phone-based money transfer service, M-Pesa. Started in 2007, it now handles millions of dollars a day in transactions.

Safaricom is in discussions with the central bank to be able to offer more services after an upgrade to the system platform.

“We need to move into offering micro-saving, micro-lending and micro-insurance,” he said.

Apart from transferring cash, M-Pesa users can also pay various bills or purchase airline tickets through the service.

Collymore, a Vodafone veteran who has previously worked in Japan and South Africa, said Kenya can attain its ambition of becoming a regional information technology hub, thanks to a well-educated workforce and investment by private firms.

“Kenya sits head and shoulders above. We just need to get a few things right, and these things are more environmental, and we can easily become the hub, not just of east Africa, but of sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.

Among short-term uncertainties are elections due by March next year. Collymore also stressed the importance of corporate governance and integrity.

Collymore encountered corporate governance short-comings when he took over the helm of Safaricom in November 2010, having to fire workers and terminate contracts with dealers for fraud which ran into “a few million dollars”.

“We are in a much better shape now than we were a year ago,” he said of the experience of fraud at the company.

He added that last year’s jump in fuel prices, high inflation and interest rates in Kenya were still affecting businesses.

The shilling fell steeply against the dollar last year, forcing policymakers to jerk up the policy rate to 18 percent from below 7 percent, within a span of three months.

“The price of fuel hasn’t got better. That still remains volatile because you have the externalities as well as the local issues. If you look at interest rates, it is still running at 18 percent, how long is that sustainable for?” Collymore said

-Reuters

Lucy Kibaki – I have noted with great concern the tendency of some politicians to drag in the name of State House whenever they wish to disparage their opponents.

Lucy Kibaki

Indeed there has been a concerted effort by some politicians to seek to enjoin State House when they want to attack or make reference to their political opponents.

This is a very unfortunate development as the country heads into the general elections.

I wish to caution such politicians to cease dragging the name of State House into their political circus.
State House is an honourable institution whose current occupant is busy serving the Kenyan nation.

The President is determined to remain focused on the proper management of the Republic of Kenya during his remaining time in office.

State House must cease to be the quick reference point in the political battles taking place as politicians attempt to grab headlines that capture the people’s imagination.

Politicians should also stop being in a rush to engage in premature political campaigns that distract the Kenyan people from their core responsibilities of fending for their families.

Leaders must also know that they have the responsibility to continue serving the Kenyan people during the remaining time of the current government.

There are still farms that need to be taken care of, roads and hospitals to be built and families that need to be fed.
This is not the time for empty political rhetoric or time to drag honourable institutions like State House into political supremacy battles but time to serve the Kenyan people.

MAMA LUCY KIBAKI
FIRST LADY OF THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA
19TH APRIL 2012