Let's take this load to the Lord in prayer

Okech Kendo

Now and the September confirmation date of the charges against the ‘Ocampo Sx’ invites honest prayers, tempered with humility. No one goes before God with hubris, and snobbish temper, and still expect his prayer to be answered. God knows the truth and it would be heretic for politicians to imagine they could play propaganda with God as well. There may also be rival prayers from victims, who expect justice, which they have yearned for, for 1,230 days since they were displaced.

God knows what people do under the cover of darkness. He also knows the possibility of people being framed. He also knows malice cannot fly, lying dogs do not thrive, and rotten eggs do not fry.

Taking minutes

In prayers God welcomes the truth, stated with humility. Which means blames and malice do not merit divine attention. In any case God has been receiving two sets of prayers — from victims of Moreno-Ocampo’s zealotry and victims of post-election violence.

Unfortunately, prayers won’t restrain Moreno-Ocampo’s from nailing someone for 2007 post-election violence. It may not even be these six. Blaming everyone did not work for Slobodan Milosevic, Butcher of the Balkans. When his day arrived before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, he was forlorn.

Citing powerful scapegoats ruined his defence. But it is psychologically consoling to blame someone.

Manufacturing scapegoats always gives the afflicted a sense of victim-hood and matyrdom.

At the peak of Milosevic’s power madness, a CIA psychiatric profile concluded he had "a malignant narcissistic personality ... strongly self-centred, vain and full of self-love".

When Milosevic was renditioned for atrocities committed by Serbian forces during the Kosovo conflict, his loyalists had disowned him.

Milosevic was charged with murder of 900 Kosovo-Albanians and the displacement of 740,000. To this was added acts of genocide committed during the war in Bosnia.

While in court Milosevic refused to take a plea, recalled how powerful he once was, insisted on conducting his own defence, dismissed the charges as politically instigated. He called them lies, and that he did not recognise the jurisdiction of the court. For him it was like a movie where he was starring.

Milosevic blamed the US, the European Union, former US President Bill Clinton, his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the Vatican, fascists, neo-Nazis, Croatians, Albanian terrorists, Bosnian Islamic fundamentalists; the mullahs of Iran, the Hezbollah of Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.

Milosevic died of heart failure in March 2006 during trial — a rejected and dejected former something.

Milosevic was the first Head of State to be brought before an international war crimes court. Then there was Saddam Hussein who decimated Kurds to show no one will get away with international crimes.

Prayers are in order, not just for The Hague plague. Even if a local tribunal is established, prayers shall still be warranted because ‘innocent’ Kenyans are facing allegations of extremely serious crimes.

There are other precedents of international justice:

Nuremberg prosecutors went for the top Command of the Nazi Germany — the crËme de la crËme of the holocaust conspirators. The holocaust was a montage of murders, tortures, rapes, destruction, slavery, displacement and extermination. The conspiracy to commit these crimes was hatched in Nuremberg, the birthplace of the Nazi party.

Armed Wing

The trials took place in the German city of Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949, marking symbolic death of the Nazi Party — Adolf Hitler’s weapon to rid Germany of Jews, and other impure races. It was at Nuremberg, where the Nazists hosted propaganda rallies. The top 20 notorious indictees were Hitler’s comrades-in-co-conspiracy. Martin Bormann, Nazi party secretary, who took minutes during the holocaust, was sentenced to death.

Karl Donitx, president of Germany, following Hitler’s suicide to evade justice, was found guilty and jailed for ten years. Hans Frank, Reich leader (1933-1945) was found guilty. His death sentence was tempered with compassion.

Wilhelm Frick, Hitler’s minister for the Interior, who wrote the Nuremberg race laws, got a death sentence. Hans Fritzesche, who headed the news division of the Nazi Propaganda ministry, was tried in place of Hitler’s master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

He was acquitted. He was an ‘innocent journalist’.

Hitler’s minister for economics was jailed for life. Walther Funk, governor of the Reichsbank was convicted but freed due to ill health.

Some of Hitler’s ministers took shortcuts to death, rather than face trial. Hermann Gˆring, commander of an armed wing of the Nazi regime, committed suicide hours before he was due for execution. Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess was jailed for life.

Head of Nazi intelligence organ got a death sentence. Alfred Jodl, commander of German armed forces, also got a death sentence. Other high-ranking officers in Hitler’s Nazi Germany had self-served deaths before the Nuremberg trials.

Racial theory ideologist and minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories Alfred Rosenberg attracted a death sentence. Hitler’s favourite architect and friend, also minister for Armaments from 1942, was repentant and remorseful. He got a soft landing of 20 years in jail.

Charges facing the ‘Ocampo Six’ are a stair below the Nazicist sins, and they shall remain innocent until proved guilty. This should be the crux of prayers so Satan does not derail justice.

Writer is The Standard’s Managing Editor Quality and Production.

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