Ocampo urges judges to confirm charges against Uhuru, Muthaura and Ali

By Moses Njagih

The prosecution team at the International Criminal Court (ICC) put its case against the second batch of post-election violence suspects to rest by urging the judges to confirm the charges against the three to full trial.

The Ocampo-led team wound up its submissions by asking the court to commit Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Postmaster General Hussein Ali to trial for crimes against humanity committed in Kenya in 2008.

The prosecution said it had mounted a strong case, providing "credible and compelling evidence" against the three and had met the threshold of the court’s requirements at the pre-trial stage to have the suspects face the charges preferred against them.

Ms Adesola Adeboyejo told the judges to find that the prosecution had proved that Muthaura, Uhuru and Ali had worked under a common plan to organise, fund and execute retaliatory attacks against ODM supporters in Nakuru and Naivasha, through the help of the Mungiki and the police, who they had authority over.

"On the basis of the evidence presented, we want the court to believe that we have established grounds for a strong case. We urge the court to find that there is substantial grounds to prove that the case should go to full trial," said Adeboyejo.

The lawyer defended the prosecution’s move to use anonymous witnesses during the confirmation hearings saying it was aimed at protecting them.

"The anonymity of the witnesses should not be used as a means to throw out the cases," the lawyer argued.

The prosecution lawyer defended the harsh criticism that three of the prosecution’s witnesses — witness number 4, 11 and 12 — had attracted from the defence team.

Criminal extortionists

"The prosecution reiterates its belief in the credibility of these witnesses," said Adeboyejo, as she defended the three who had attracted criticism from a spirited defence team keen on rubbishing their evidence.

The defence team had urged the court to find the credibility of the three witnesses as wanting and thus dismiss it in its totality. They argued that witness four had given inconsistent lies to the court, and described witness 11 and 12 as criminal extortionists, whose evidence should not be relied on.

But Adeboyejo laboured to mend the holes punched in the evidence of the three witnesses, saying the same had been collaborated by nine other witnesses.

She went ahead to reveal the nature of the witnesses, who include Mungiki members, a former commissioner of the Waki Commission, and an insider in Government who had given the structure of the Government’s organs, including the police and security committees.

Others were a witness who gave an insight into the killings of suspected Mungiki members by members of Kwe Kwe squad, a specialist in sexual and gender violence who handled some victims of violence and a member of the taskforce on police reforms.

The lawyer dismissed the defence mounted by the three and accused their lawyers of conducting "selective and haphazard" evaluation of the prosecution evidence, thereby making misrepresentations of the same.

Adeboyejo also faulted the defence for availing in court witnesses who could not pass as independent.

"The defence brought people with keen interests and those who would want that this case does not go to full trial," she said citing Kikuyu MP Lewis Nguyai and Foreign Affairs PS Thuita Mwangi, who she said were close allies of their suspects.

Adeboyejo said that evidence adduced by Mr Ali’s first witness, Peter Otieno, had helped the prosecution’s case as it had confirmed the complicity on the part of the police when he said that those deployed were too few to quell the violence in Naivasha.

The lawyer also dismissed the alibi that the defence had raised over the meetings held at Nairobi Club and the State House, saying there was a possibility for Muthaura to attend the breakfast meeting and also avail himself for a National Security Advisory Committee meeting, which started after 9am.

"It is easy as the distance between the two venues of the meetings is only 2.4 kilometres apart," she submitted.