ICC suspects must be wary of stealthy Bensouda

By John Gerezani

Fatou Bensouda is a woman on a mission. If her body language, clarity of thought and sharp mind are yardsticks of the courtroom slugfest that we should expect come April 2013, then the four suspects need to rethink their strategies.

I followed the press conferences the prosecutor hosted during her recent visit to Kenya keenly and realised that she had pre-empted the questions journalists had prepared, leaving many clutching at straws.

It seems all that the chaps wanted to know was the political angle to presidential aspirants Uhuru Kenyatta’s and William Ruto’s International Criminal Court (ICC) predicament and on this her standard answer was that the suspects had been investigated, then had been indicted by the pre-trial chamber and all that she awaits is suspects in the dock. Straight talk there.

At a time when guys were vilifying Ms Bensouda’s predecessor and chest thumping that they preferred The Hague option as it would take another 50 years before their cases could be heard, I warned in this column that the Kenyan case was a different ball game and that justice would come in real fast.

I even went as far as advising the suspects to prepare for indictment. Not that I was privy to the thinking of the judges but I had observed that whatever rumours and innuendos witnesses had allegedly alluded to was by and large validated by the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) reports presented at the Waki Commission in camera. The funny thing is that NSIS boss Michael Gichangi and team were candid in their testimony because they wanted to absolve themselves off the post-election violence blame, and they also believed the final classified report would be presented to the President and that would be end of story. What Waki did will forever remain in the annals of history as the boldest stroke ever made by a citizen for the love of country. Francis Muthaura has gone the Henry Kosgey way, adopting strategic silence while planning his defence.

Radio journalist Joshua Sang has gone even further by withdrawing his intended candidature for a Senate seat. Not so Ruto and Uhuru who have declared that politics is part of their staple. Of course the two have every right to exercise their rights but I do think the situation is getting dicier as political heat builds up.

Reports that Uhuru has bolstered his all-white defence team with another experienced trial lawyer from Britain and then successfully applied for the redacting of the names of three prosecution witnesses only proves how tight things are despite the bravado. Picture what would happen if hired goons clad in the United Republican Party or The National Alliance colours were to attack members of a rival party.

We all know where the blame would be placed even before the truth is established and the damage will have been done since politics is about perception. Uhuru or Ruto will be docked for breaching the terms and conditions of the court and could have warrants of arrest issued. As they play politics they must be alive to the latent possibility of their rivals employing dirty tricks to get them out of the equation.

Failure or delay by Government to provide documents deemed crucial to the trial will only harden the resolve of the court and might backfire on the suspects and impact negatively on President Kibaki once he leaves office. ICC is as local a court as it remains international since by willingly ratifying the Rome treaty and enacting the international Crimes Act we cooked our goose and the fallacious argument that the ICC infringes on our sovereignty is hogwash. My free advice to the suspects is to be wary of Bensouda. She is stealthy, strong willed and focussed. That she could in one breath count and name a handful Kenyan tribes shows the depth she has gone into understanding the Kenyan situation and she could be psyched to get her first conviction as the Chief Prosecutor.

Let’s not forget that it is her and not Moreno Ocampo who vowed in 2009 that the Kenyan case will serve as a warning to all politicians in Africa that electoral violence has no place in the modern world. My experience with seasoned women prosecutors shows that they are more thorough in their research and more meticulous in their presentations in court.

They can also feign helplessness, deftly give a disarming smile to an accused then go for the kill like Piranhas. Let me repeat retired President Moi’s warning: The ICC is not a laughing matter.

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