Kenya Stockholm Blog

24 comments

• Human Rights

  November 19, 2013 05:50

  

  The First time War -Criminals threatening Super-Powers USA /UK/FRANCE-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJaxnHWQdMg

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• Human Rights

  November 19, 2013 06:21

  

  Kenyatta&Ruto Fixing The Super-powers>

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• Magendo Route.

  November 19, 2013 07:12

  

  The Failed State or A Banana Republic>

  http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/18/world/africa/somalia-kenya-border-elbagir/index.html?hpt=iaf_c1

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• Mt. Kenya fwaked Ruto

  November 19, 2013 07:37

  

  The Framing of William Samoei Ruto: How Martha Karua Made an Ass Out of International Law

  I came to meet the honourable William Ruto, the Kenyan MP and (at the time) candidate for president, when he was chosen to be guest of honour at the launch of “Unyielding Hope:the Life and Times of Koitaleel Somoei”, a biography of the freedom fighter who led the resistance to the British invasion of Kenya which I had co-authored with a descendant of the subject. The only thing I knew about Ruto at the time was that he was indicted for crimes against humanity at the Hague. My Kenyan friends made haste to assure me that not only was he innocent but that he was the best person to launch the book, being the de facto leader of the Kalenjin ethnic group to which Koitaleel had belonged. However I could not be easy in my mind without determining for myself whether William Ruto was guilty of the terrible crimes of which he stood accused.

  The accusations against him are that he helped to organise the violence that followed in the wake of the disputed result of the 2007 elections directed at the supporters of the allegedly victorious President Kibaki. This violence was racially charged with Kalenjin gangs attacking Kikuyus in the Rift valley. The worst incident, which shocked the conscience of the world, saw a church full of Kibaki supporters burned to death. There were also revenge atrocities committed by Government supporters. The Waki commission, established to investigate these troubles, named certain individuals whom it believed had organised or assisted the commission of crimes against humanity. These names were kept secret from the Kenyan public instead being passed on to Kofi Annan who passed them to the International Criminal Court. Six Kenyans were indicted by the Hague, though two of the cases (against Henry Kosgey and Mohammed Hussein Ali), were dropped leaving two (Ruto and Joseph Sang) charged in connection with the original violence, and two others (rival presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and former civil service chief Francis Muthaura) for the counterviolence.

  Ruto’s alleged role in these troubles was as an organiser and financer. I asked my co author Kipchoge Araap Chomu, Executive Director of the Koitaleel Somoei foundation and our mutual friend the businessman Mike Cositany how they could be so confident that Ruto was not guilty. They replied that he couldn’t have organised the violence for the simple reason that the violence wasn’t organised. As soon as Kibaki’s alleged victory was announced the supporters of his opponent, Raila Odinga erupted into violence. This outcome was a reprise of the aftermath of the 1992 and 1997 elections which were also followed by violent outbursts.

  After researching the matter I have decided that my friends were only partially right. I think there were ODM politicians who poured petrol on the flames once the violence had started and likely some who planned beforehand to cause havoc in the event of a stolen election. The question to be answered is whether Ruto was one of the guilty parties.

  Some of the charges originally made against Ruto may not in the event be preferred at the ICC due to having been disproven in advance. For example that he was in one place handing out guns when he was captured by the Kenyan media in quite another. Other charges are a priori wildly implausible to anyone with a little local knowledge. Thus the Waki Commission entertained the notion that Kalenjin leaders in the Rift valley had organised a mass oathing ceremony in which the young men receiving circumcision swore to make war upon the Kikuyu. It has been claimed that 25 oxen supplied by William Ruto were sacrificed to seal the oath along with 25 dogs.

  A minor problem with this narrative is that the Kalenjin have never sacrificed dogs. This was confirmed to me by the renowned authority on Kalenjin history and culture Dr Kipkoeech araap Sambu.The nearest historical paralell that he could came up with was the cutting in two of a dog to seal a peace treaty, a ceremony which did not take the form of a sacrifice. A weightier problem, pointed out by my friends, is that it would have been impossible to keep a conspiracy on this scale a secret. As Kalenjin community leaders they would have had to have known. So if the Waki commission is right my friends are lying to me when they say there was no conspiracy by the Kalenjin community against the other peoples of Kenya. My friends did not claim that there were no atrocities committed with premeditation and they believed the counter violence showed the hallmarks of organisation. Rather it was that they insisted that the original explosion of violence in 2007 was just that, an explosion which Ruto could not possibly have controlled.

  Believers in the Kalenjin conspiracy may say that, after all, it did not remain a secret. A handful of brave witnesses have blown the whistle and are due to testify at the Hague. So what about these witnesses? Kipchoge told me that he knew two of the witnesses, one of them against Henry Kosgey (whose case was eventually dismissed), another against Ruto. He had asked the witnesses why they were lying and was told they had been offered money, safe houses and relocation to a country of their choice for asylum. They said the opportunity was too good to miss.”I need to eat” said one. When I asked Kipchoge who was responsible for bribing the witnesses he surprised me by claiming NGOs were responsible. However when I looked into it I found that some of the original witnesses against Ruto had recanted, claiming they had been bribed by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) a supposedly autonomous Government body. My friend’s arguments persuaded me of Ruto’s likely innocence and I appeared with him at the book launch. However NGOs made for unlikely villains and I felt compelled to dig deeper.

  I went on to speak to one of the original witnesses against Ruto, whom I shall call X, as he is not yet willing to be named. X told me that during the post election violence he had witnessed atrocities against Kikuyu and had given evidence to the Waki commission about the actual perpetrators who, he says, remain free to this day. Prior to giving evidence he met the then justice minister and current presidential candidate, Martha Karua, who called a lawyer Njenga Mwagi who persuaded X to introduce a rumour about Ruto in the last paragraph of his statement.

  X was first asked to improve his story by Ken Wafula founder of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy and subsequently chairman of Kenya’s National Council for NGOs. He said that Omar Hassan of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and Martha Karua also pressured him to further incriminate Ruto. In return for implicating Ruto he was housed in luxury accomodation, paid 60,000 Kenyan shillings a month from the KNCHR plus 45,000 a month from US Aid Kenya and promised relocation abroad.

  The claim that Wafula and Hassan had bribed witnesses is one that has been aired before. Ken Wafula, responding to the claims in the Daily Nation, admitted that witnesses had been housed in apartments costing 120,000 shillings a month and had been paid 60,000 a month “subsistence”. He said other groups were paying the same individuals 70,000 a month. To put this in perspective 60,000 Kenyan shillings is arond £450, an amount which could be described as a subsistence allowance in the UK. In Kenya however, where the majority of the population live on a dollar or two a day per family member it is a handsome sum. Xs allowance came to around £800. According to Wafula’s own testimony others were receiving £1000 a month. The monthly rental allowance for witnesses also works at around £1000.

  X told me that the witnesses who received these allowances were poor people, many of them unemployed and that the money was dependent on their accusing William Ruto. He said that he and the other witnesses against Ruto had met together to concoct their testimony. I did not know what weight to place on X’s testimony, I thought he was telling the truth but logically he had either lied in the past or was lying now.

  I managed to make contact with John Busii the chairman of the regulatory committee for Kenya’s National Council of NGOs. If anyone was in a position to tell me what was going on he was, I reasoned.

  Giles Humphry

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• Mt. Kenya fwaked Ruto

  November 19, 2013 07:37

  

  John Busii’s Evidence

  John Busii is the founder director of HIRTO, the Highway Rescue Team Organisation which works in the Rift Valley to promote food security and peace.. It is a small and underfunded NGO compared with others in this story but Busii is well respected and serves as the chairman of the Regulatory Committee of Kenya’s National Council of NGOs. He is not a friend or supporter of Ruto and is a life member of a rival political party. He was able to give me fresh information on the plot to frame Ruto and has decided to speak out publicly for the first time.

  I asked John Busii about the claims made by some of the original witnesses against Ruto that Omar Hassan of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and Ken Wafula, formerly chairman of the National Council for NGOs had been bribing them. Busii stated that in a conversation in late 2010 at the Midland Hotel Nakuru Ken Wafula had admitted to recruiting poor witnesses willing to give testimony against Ruto in return for reward and helping to relocate them abroad. Wafula had said John Busii would be shocked when he found out how Ruto had been fixed and that he hoped Ruto would spend 20 or 30 years in jail which would be a triumph for human rights campaigners.

  I asked if it was possible that Wafula sincerely believed in Ruto’s guilt. Busii replied that the motivation of both Wafula and Omar Hassan was their support for the Prime Minister Raila Odinga who viewed Ruto as a threat to his presidential ambitions. Odinga was the candidate who was officially defeated by President Kibaki in 2007, setting off the post election violence. He was supported at the time by William Ruto whose advocacy was influential in securing for Odinga the office of Prime Minister as a consolation prize. However both men were candidates for the 2013 elections creating intense rivalry between them. They were also rivals for the 2007 ODM nomination. As the testimony of other witnesses will show it was only after the original KNCHR investigation and the Waki commission that Hassan and Wafula started bribing witnesses. Ruto and Odinga were friends at the time of the KNCHR and Waki reports. Busii’s belief that Odinga’s allies were motivated by Ruto’s ambitions constitutes just one possible explanation of their behaviour. The testimony of my second witness, William Rono, suggests another. John Busii cited prejudice against the Kalenjin as an additional factor lying behind Ken Wafula’s campaign against Ruto. He also told me that the original report of the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights into the post election violence did not implicate William Ruto. He says he saw the original report on their website.

  Busii stated further that Ken Wafula had been bribing journalists to write articles attacking Ruto and supporting Wafula. On four occassions he saw Wafula paying the journalists. He said Wafula had been deposed as the chair of the NGO council in July 2012 at a meeting Busii chaired, for violation of the council’s rules and code of ethics. Busii helped to remove him in disgust at his antics. He added that he had no personal animus against Ken Wafula. His motivation was simply revulsion at the perversion of the course of justice and the original purposes of Kenya’s NGOs. Wafula claims that the special general assembly that ousted him was illegal. Others have counter claimed that the meeting that originally elected him was illegal and that he was never chairman in the first place.

  In a complaint echoed by my other sources John Busii asked why the ICC did not conduct a full independent inquiry. The ICC have stated in response to similar complaints that they did not depend solely on the inquiries of the two main Kenyan investigations into the post election violence, that of the Kenya National Commission on human rights and the Waki Commission. This I believe. I shall be adducing testimony to show that many of the accusations against Ruto were manufactured after Waki’s inquiry due to the paucity of the original evidence.

  Busii named as co conspirators Muthoni Wanyeki of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Professor Makau Mutua, an ICC consultant, Wambugu Ngumijiri a jounalist, Maina Kiai formerly chair of the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights Njonjo Mue, formerly legal counsel to the same body and Martha Karua, former justice minister and current presidential candidate.

  Martha Karua’s motivation must be assumed to be different from that of Odinga supporters such as Wafula and Hassan. She is a Kikuyu politician who was justice minister at the time of the 2007 elections. In January 2008 in an interview with BBCs Hardtalk she accused the Orange Democratic Movement, which then contained both Ruto and Odinga of planning the post election violence and organising ethnic cleansing. After the peace agreement she agreed to serve under Odinga. She could not therefore go after him and presumably went after Ruto because she wanted someone to pay for the crimes against her community.

  John Busii’s evidence was invaluable but he didn’t claim a complete knowledge of the inner workings of the conspiracy. Fortunately many of the details were filled in for me by one of the original consprators, William Rono.

  Giles Humphry

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• Mt. Kenya fwaked Ruto

  November 19, 2013 07:38

  

  William Rono’s Evidence
  At the time of the 2007 election William Rono was an activist in President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity. After the election he was elected PNU chairman for Eldoret North in the Rift Valley. In the post election violence his house was attacked by supporters of the Orange Democratic Movement. In the aftermath of the violence he and other PNU activists set out to fix leading figures in the Rift valley ODM on charges of organising violence. The main targets were Ruto, Joshua Sang and Henry Kosgey. They also hoped to fix Raila Odinga, the national leader of the ODM but the main focus was on the local Rift valley leaders whom they could better hope to credibly implicate. At the same time, he says, ODM activists were seeking to fix PNU figures on charges of election rigging and counterviolence.

  His aim was not to get the targets convicted but rather to trash their reputation before the various investigations set up to look into the violence,primarily the investigations of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the Waki commission. Rono himself acted as one of the witnesses and knew seven of those who were relocated to Tanzania to become ICC witnesses. All of these had positions in the PNU or affiliate parties such as NARC Kenya, currently led by Martha Karua. All were poor, several unemployed. Typically they were victims of the post election violence seeking revenge. They were from the Kalenjin community, chosen because Kalenjin witnesses had a better chance of fixing Kalenjin politicians such as Ruto Sang and Koskei. All of these witnesses testified to both the KNCHR and Waki rendering unremarkable the fact that they came to similar conclusions. He says the witnesses met together to discuss their evidence.

  Rono also says the PNU set up a secretariat to coordinate the framing process. It was headed by a prominent lawyer in Nairobi allied to Martha Karua. He said there was close co-ordination between Martha Karua’s office and the KNCHR and several of the lawyers with the Waki commission. Rono says he knew Karua even before the elections, but that she never directly asked him to lie, though he was encouraged to testify by a lady from the Justice ministry sent by Karua and that Karua often sought information about the statements he had made. He says that Odinga’s people also questioned him about his testimony but their involvement came later than Karua’s. Rono originally received just 30,000 shillings a month from the KNCHR. This was upped to 40,000 and finally to 60,000 as he expanded his testimony against Ruto.He also received 35,000 a month from US Aid. He was housed in accommodation costing 120,000 shillings (close to £1000) a month in an exclusive part of Nairobi. He and the others were promised relocation to the West. He says they went from rags to riches overnight. They were first relocated to Tanzania, one by one. Rono was supposed to go first, but he kept on making excuses as he had cold feet once it became clear that the aim was to convict Ruto. In the end he never went to Tanzania.

  Rono disagreed with John Busii that Ruto’s name was not in the original KNCHR report. He said that a student lawyer by the name of Bosire working with the KNCHR had told him the names that would be in the report and said Ruto’s was one of those named. Neither Busii or Rono were willing to change their statement when I told them of the contradiction. I thought this was actually a good sign as it showed that unlike the ICC witnesses they refused to be coached. Potentially the two statements are compatible. Florence Jaoka, formerly chair of the KNCHR has said there were ommissions in the original report due to pressure of time. A former Odinga aide, Tony Gachoka has claimed that questions were raised in closed sessions of the Waki Commission over the existence of more than one report from the KNCHR. According to Kenya’s “Standard” newpaper The Waki commission accepted “On the Brink of the Precipice,final report” into evidence after considering the KNCHR’s explanation in closed session. All other versions of the document were embargoed. It is thus possible that there was more than one “original” report and that both my witnesses are correct in their recollections. William Rono told me that the original investigation by the KNCHR was quite fair and that the statements made by witnesses against Ruto then were much less incendiary than their later testimony so it may be there was some doubt over whether to include Ruto’s name.

  William Rono said he had been told by Bosire that Raila Odinga’s name was included in the original report. John Busii couldn’t remember if he had seen it, which surprised me but also seemed to confirm his honesty. Since he suspected Ruto was framed on Odinga’s behalf (though not necessarily with his knowledge) it would have been easy to support his theory by saying Odinga’s name had been included. As he pointed out to me it was now four years since the report. The role in the conspiracy played by Omar Hassan, currently senatorial candidate and deputy chairman of “friends of Raila” and Ken Wafula (also an Odinga supporter) may have been motivated simply by the desire to move the spotlight from Raila rather than fear of Ruto’s presidential ambitions.

  Rono told me that he resigned from the witness programme after Omar Hassan questioned him about his reluctance to go to Tanzania and gave him seven days to prepare for relocation. He says he was unwilling to participate in an attempt to convict innocent men at the ICC. He believes that all of the “Ocampo four” were wrongly accused. However he did not claim inside knowledge of the ODM plot to fix PNU leaders and some others who think Ruto innocent nevertheless think Kenyatta guilty, a proposition which, however, is perfectly compatible with the idea that most or all the evidence against Kenyatta has been manufactured.

  While Rono cannot be cited as an authority on the ODM machinations, his allegations about the PNU plot to frame ODM leaders deserve to be listened to. His evidence made sense and cohered with that of my other sources. Even where he differed from them his refusal to be coached added to his veracity.

  Perhaps there will be readers who feel that the evidence cited so far falls short of absolute proof of Ruto’s innocence. However they should be aware that there are certainly others out there who could confirm my story if only they had the courage.

  Giles Humphry

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• Mt. Kenya fwaked Ruto

  November 19, 2013 07:39

  

  Reflections on the ICC Process

  After publishing the first installments of my story I was contacted by a quite well known Kenyan journalist. He asked me if I knew how Martha Karua had used Joseph Kamau (formerly CID chief) and private investigator Jane Nyawira to frame Ruto, Kones and Laboso. If I did not, he said, he would supply the details. However he got cold feet and clammed up when pressed. The late Kipkalya Kones, former minister of roads and Lorna Laboso, assistant minister for Home Affairs, were potential candidates for charges of crimes against humanity until their deaths in a plane crash in June 2008.

  This confirmed what I already knew, that there are others yet to speak out who know further details about Ruto’s framing. Before speaking to John Busii I had been in touch with another member of the National Council for NGOs who promised to blow the whistle on the conspiracy but he had also proved unwilling to go on the record.

  There was one part of John Busii’s evidence that I originally held back, regarding it as incredible. He had told me that he believed the Western powers stood behind the conspiracy due to their fears of Ruto and Kenyatta’s radicalism. I thought that this claim suffered from the same two flaws that afflict all conspiracy theories. It assumed governments are efficient and that people can keep secrets. However at the time I believed US Aid was just another NGO. I subsequently discovered that it is a US Government agency tasked with promoting US Government policy. So it is clear that the Americans, at least, were involved at some level.

  In saying this I am not at all lining up with those who believe that the ICC process is a racist neo-colonialist plot. Those who make this charge point out that the ICC has only tried black Africans. Yet this is purely an accident of timing. The white Yugoslavian war criminals were also tried at the Hague. They were tried by ad hoc tribunals as the ICC had yet to be established, but had the ICC been set up ten years earlier it would have tried these cases also. Moreover the ICC was not set up by the West but by the whole international community, with the enthusiastic participation of Africans who have taken 20% of the top jobs. Of the 8 African ICC cases, 5 were self referrals, two were referred by the security council and just one (the Kenyan case) was technically initiated by the ICC. I say “technically” as the case was launched on the advice of an African Union appointed panel and after the Kenyan Parliament had made clear that it would prefer such a prosecution to the alternative of setting up a local tribunal. It is for that reason presumably that President Kenyatta, during the course of the election campaign, described the case against him as a self referral. Meanwhile those who point to the involvement of US Aid as proof of a racist western plot surely cannot intend to imply that Obama’s motivation in supporting the ICC process derives from the fact he is half white? That is even less plausible than the alternate charge that he is moved by the fact he is half Luo, and thus inclined to favour Odinga.

  I support the ICC and the system of international law and I think it would be tragic if false allegations of racism laid against the ICC were to stymie the prosecution of the likes of Bashir, the blood soaked racist tyrant of the Sudan who, by his open defiance of the ICC, has lost the right to the presumption of innocence enjoyed by Ruto and Kenyatta. Advocates of Kenya’s withdrawal from the Rome statute point out that the US is not a signatory. One wonders at the point being made here. That Kenyan leaders should be able to get away with crimes against humanity because American presidents can? Kenyans who reason thus forget that America’s crimes are committed against foreigners far away, the victims of impunity in Kenya are Kenyans. Moreover, while Kenya may indeed have the right to pull out of the Rome statute she would find it much harder to justify withdrawal from the ongoing ICC process, given the many promises with which her leaders (including Kenyatta and Ruto) have bound her. And, incidentally, if she did withdraw she would lose the right that she possesses under the Rome statute to pursue war crimes that might be committed against Kenya by non signatory states such as the USA.

  Having said all of that, if the ICC has a right to hold Kenya to her promise of cooperation the Kenyan Government also has the right to hold the ICC to its promise to provide a fair trial for the four Kenyan citizens it has indicted.
  And here their is a real question mark against the ICC’s capacity. A pre trial ruling of the ICC, overturning its own precedents, granted the prosecution motion to be allowed almost unlimited witness coaching. Even if the defence is allowed similar latitude it wont create a level playing field as such extensive coaching can only benefit the party that is lying. This ruling, coming on top of the evidence of unethical evidence gathering methods by former ICC prosecutor Luis Ocampo makes it hard to have faith that the trial of the Ocampo four will be fair.

  This greatly strengthens the formerly weak argument for transferring the cases to an African court. The counter-argument here has always been that such a transfer would further delay justice and that an African court might be unwilling to convict Kenyatta or Ruto even if the evidence indicated that it should. However with the exposure of Ocampo’s antics (by myself and others) and the pre-trial ruling overturning all sound legal precedent, the argument now devolves to a choice between two trial venues, each with a question mark against their capacity to offer impartial justice.

  Whether or not the ICC agrees to a transfer of jurisdiction it must urgently address the failings of both its prosecutorial and judicial arms in the case of the Ocampo four. I do not consider it melodramatic to say that the future of the international justice system hangs in the balance.

  Giles Humphry

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• Mt. Kenya fwaked Ruto

  November 19, 2013 07:40

  

  Why the Charges Against Ruto Don’t Add Up

  According to the ever expanding charges laid by the ICC against William Ruto, from as early as 2005 Ruto was planning the expulsion from the Rift Valley of supporters of Kenya’s Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Kikuyu people, two substantially overlapping groups. His alleged aim was to turn the Rift into a fief of the Orange Democratic Union (ODM) and to transform it into a Kikuyu free zone.

  In “The Framing of William Samoei Ruto” I showed how the ICC was hoodwinked by “evidence” manufactured by Ruto’s political enemies co-ordinated by Kenya’s then justice minister Martha Karua. However even absent my own researches there would be good grounds for scepticism about the ICC’s charges.

  The application of a little logic is in order here. Ruto’s long time political home was KANU until he joined forces with the ODM in 2005. In 2006 he launched a bid for the ODM nomination and was placed third with just 368 votes compared with 2,656 votes for the winner Raila Odinga. This result was unsurprising considering that the Orange Democratic Movement was always Raila’s creature. In 2012 Ruto moved to the United Democratic Movement, only to launch his own United Republican Party later that year. Today the URP is allied with Uhuru Kenyatta’s TNA, the heir to the Party of National Unity.

  If we are to believe the ICC prosecutor no sooner had Ruto joined the ODM than he started plotting to purge the rival PNU from the Rift, sticking to his plan even after it became clear from the results of the presidential nomination ballot that that the ODM was owned by Odinga and not Ruto. This imputes to the party hopping Ruto precisely the kind of long term identification with a particular political vehicle that he manifestly lacks.

  As for Ruto’s supposed hatred of the Kikuyu, it is true that this claim cannot be dismissed solely on the grounds that he has had long term friendships with paticular Kikuyu such as Kenyatta. Many people are capable of combining hostile feelings towards a group while maintaining friendships with individual members of the same group. However even Ruto’s enemies dont accuse him of stupidity. What some call intelligence others may label cunning. Still others might say he is too clever by half. Yet the plan for ethnic cleansing attributed to him makes sense only on the assumption that he is an imbecile. And if he were an imbecile he would never have risen so high.

  During the months and years of planning Ruto is supposed to have devoted to plotting the expulsion of the Kikuyu it must be assumed that, at some point, he would have considered the probable consequences of putting his plan into action.
  A moments reflection would have sufficed to convince him that Kikuyu leaders would not simply stand by and let their people be slaughtered. That is to say he would have predicted the counterviolence. To have proceeded with his alleged plan would have made sense only if he desired the break up of the Republic of Kenya, leaving him as reigning warlorld in the Rift. Yet if there is one thing we know about William Ruto it is that his ambitions are much larger than that.

  By 2007 Ruto was already first citizen amongst the Kalenjin. There is debate over whether he delivered the Rift to the ODM in the 2007 election or merely took the credit for doing so but both sides take it for granted that he is only contender for the title of leader of the Kalenjin. Like any ambitious man he wanted to rise higher still, which is why he sought the ODM nomination for the presidency. The last thing he wanted was to destroy the Republic of Kenya as with it he would have destroyed his own dream of occupying the State House. In short the allegations against Ruto simply don’t square with what everybody knows about the man.

  When seeking to solve a crime the Romans used to ask “cui bono?”, “who gains?”. We know who gained from the post election chaos, it was Raila Odinga, who secured the consolation prize of the premiership as a result. And there have been many who have accused Raila of driving the violence. As an admirer of the Prime Minister I make no such accusation. I dont actually believe it is necessary to look for a controlling hand behind riots that broke out across the country the moment the election result was announced. I merely observe that if one wanted to find such a prime mover Odinga’s portrait would fit much more neatly into the frame than does Ruto’s.

  I suppose it might be argued that Ruto could have sponsored the violence in the hope of gaining a reward from Raila if he succeeded in wresting the presidency from Kibaki. Had the ICC limited itself to imputing such a motive and set aside the fantasies about a long term plan to expel PNU supporters/Kikuyu its case would at least have cleared the hurdle of conceivability. Even then there would not be any good reason to believe in Ruto’s guilt. The same posse of hired witnesses who accuse him of sponsoring the post election violence also accuse him of manifestly impossible plans and motives with respect to the years prior to the election. Indeed given what I have unearthed about the activities of Martha Karua and Joseph Kamua, (from which one can infer also the probable involvement of the security services), I would not believe in Ruto’s guilt even if the prosecution produced a tape recording of him saying “kill all the Kikuyu!”

  The lawyers for the “Ocampo four” have been accused of theatrics. However it is not theatrics to say that your client has been framed when he has, or to say that a prosecution is political when it is, or yet to say that he isnt getting a fair trial when he clearly isnt. Are we to think it merely coincidence that the ICC chose to indict three men from the ODM and three from the Government side? Or that at the next stage in the case it struck off one from each side? Shouldn’t we suspect politics when the two apparent principals in the violence escape prosecution while those under them carry the can? And how can one have faith that a trial will be fair when the prosecution simply refuse even to consider the evidence of those (such as Tony Gachoka) who think they have made a wrong call, withold crucial evidence and the names of witnesses from the accused and seek and gain permission for extensive witness coaching?

  As a passionate believer in the system of international law and the necessity of an international criminal court I have been extremely distressed by the accumulating evidence of the ICCs failings. I regret to say that at present it isn’t fit to try a ham sandwhich let alone Presidents and Prime Ministers.

  Giles Humphry

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• Learning History

  November 19, 2013 12:25

  

  Read it yourselves then start querring this funny history with daniel Arap Moi and Swedish missionaries or Settlers in Rift Valley> By John Kamau

  More by this Author

  In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lena Tungo Moi strode Kenya’s political scene with her visibility as the vice-president’s wife.

  Then in the middle of the 1970s, she faded away from the public arena never to be heard of again until her death in 2004.

  The collapse of her marriage in 1974 and divorce in 1979 was a bitter blow to the ardent Christian who had been raised under strict African Inland Church (AIC) doctrines.

  Lena’s parents, the Paul Bomett family, were pioneer Christians in Eldama Ravine.

  They respected Moi, the young, tall, handsome and well-mannered orphan boy.

  That is how Moi found himself in the Bometts’ home, where he silently admired Helena, the beautiful girl with a round face.

  It was at the Bometts’ that Moi sought shelter during school holidays, unable to return home, 160 kilometres away, like the older boys.

  He would also stay at the home of the Christian family of Isaiah Chesire, the father of Kanu’s nominated MP, Zipporah Kittony, and former Eldoret North MP, Reuben Chesire.

  Moi’s father, Kimoi arap Chebii, had died in 1928. Moi was only four then and little is known about his mother, Kabon.

  ELDER BROTHER BECAME GUARDIAN

  What is known is that his elder brother, Tuitoek, became his guardian and that he was one of the herdsboys from Sacho location recommended to join the new Africa Inland Mission (AIM) School at Kabartonjo in 1934 before it was shifted to Kapsabet.

  Lena, born in 1926, was also a student at the AIM School in Eldama Ravine before she joined Tenwek Girls’ Boarding School in Kericho.

  A devout Christian, she, together with her brother William Bomett and sister Dina, became the face of educated converts.

  After exposure in the US with some Christian families, Lena had returned to become a primary school teacher and would visit local churches accompanied by Moi. They would each carry a Bible.

  “She was an iron lady but with a great sense of humour,” recalled Paul Chemirchir in Moi’s biography, The Making of An African Statesman, by Andrew Morton.

  It was during this period that Lena started dating Moi, whose promotion to principal at Tambach (he was recommended by education officer Moses Mudavadi, the father of one of Moi’s vice-presidents, Musalia Mudavadi) shoved him into stardom in the region, first as a teacher, then as a preacher.

  A year after Moi returned from training at Kagumo Teachers College, he married Lena in a ceremony conducted by the Reverend Erik Barnett.

  The choice of Erik Barnett was apt. Whereas the Barnett family was instrumental in Moi’s education, Erik’s younger brother, Paul, had baptised Lena — his first duty after returning to Kenya as a missionary.

  He also built Moi’s first house. Again, while Moi was in Tambach, and as Paul was going through the region opening churches and schools, he would sleep at Moi’s house.

  The relationship was much deeper than that. Erik’s father, Albert Barnett, had left Australia in 1907, believing that God had called him as a missionary to Kenya.

  Then a bachelor, Barnett had boarded a steamship to Mombasa and travelled towards Lake Baringo, where he lived among the Tugen in what is today Kabarnet before settling at Eldama Ravine. Kabarnet town is named after him. It means “the place of Barnett”.

  INTENSE DEVOTION TO CHRISTIANITY

  This started influencing a generation of African Christians whose intense devotion to the faith was impeccable. With his wife Elma, they built a mission station at Eldama Ravine where a large number of missionary families started converting locals into the faith.

  At times when Moi was not staying with the Bomett family, he would stay with the Barnetts. It is here that the story of Kapkorios Toroitich arap Moi and Helena Bomett, later Lena Moi, started.

  Moi had taken off to the mission hoping to get an education at the Barnetts-run African Inland Mission.

  They would wake up at 6am, work in the vegetable gardens and haul gallons of water from the river to the station. In the afternoon, they would sit with Barnett’s Swedish wife, Elma, to learn numbers.

  The Barnetts made Moi the Sunday school teacher at an early age as they encouraged him to take a leadership role in the church. By 1942, he was the school captain of the government school, with Paul and Erik Barnett as his peers — the two missionary sons of Albert Barnett.

  It is this close relationship that saw Erik officiate the wedding of Moi to Lena in 1950 at the AIC mission in Eldama Ravine after he paid two heifers, one ox, and four sheep to the Bomett family. Moi’s long-time friend, Francis Cherogony, was the best man.

  With the marriage, Lena abandoned her career as a teacher and immersed herself into bringing up her family, settling down with Moi at Tambach Government School, where his first two children, Jennifer and Jonathan Kipkemboi, were born in 1952 and 1953, respectively.

  Although most of those who knew Moi in the 1950s thought he would make an excellent preacher, Moi liked teaching more than anything else. Things took a new twist for Lena in 1955, when her husband was appointed to the Legco to replace the inefficient John ole Tameno.

  Moi bought a Land Rover and opened a posho mill in south Baringo, then started spending his early years of marriage crisscrossing the Rift Valley as the region’s senior-most politician at the height of the emergency.

  QUIET TEACHING LIFE

  The quiet teaching life that the couple had anticipated was gone as Moi moved out of the school compound with his family for Nairobi. “He now dressed in suits and ties rather than the shorts and long socks that had been his trademark as a teacher.

  He and his family were better fed, eating a richer diet than they had ever had before,” wrote Moi’s biographer.

  But Moi’s political relationship with his in-laws was not always at its best. The fallout with the Bometts appeared to have started in the 1961 election when his brother-in-law, Eric Bomett, stood against him as an independent candidate in the General Election.

  It was not personal. It was a matter of principle,” Eric would later say. Although Eric would enter Parliament as a Specially Elected Member on a Kanu ticket, it was Moi’s Kadu that carried the day, eclipsing Kanu in the region.

  As Moi was on the move in the pre-independence politics, Lena became a housewife. In an interview in 1967, she said it was necessary that the children were cared for by their own mothers if they were to grow up mentally and physically healthy.

  “She is equally assiduous about looking after her husband, who enjoys her cooking and only eats outside the home when he has to,” veteran journalist Faraj Dumila, who conducted the interview, wrote.

  Moi would also remark: “I owe her much of my success in the service of my people and my country. She has always been an encouraging factor in all aspects of my political life.”

  But Moi chose not to say much about Lena to his official biographer, Andrew Morton, leading the writer to conclude: “The character of the man is elusive… a biographer’s nightmare; happy to let you near, but not so close. He has mastered the art of selective deafness…”

  Thus, Moi reveals nothing about his ex-wife. What we know is that in most of his public functions, especially after independence, Lena was always in tow, spotting a headscarf or with her Afro hair pulled back.

  ROMANTIC WALK

  There was also the romantic walk in July 1970 on the Orapa pipe in Botswana, where the world’s richest diamond mines had been discovered.

  With most of her children in their teens, with the last-born, Gideon, having been born in 1964, Lena had ploughed herself into public meetings, conducting harambees and supporting women’s groups in the Rift Valley.

  But it was Moi’s appointment as vice-president in 1967 that brought her to national limelight, and she was to enjoy six years of fame.

  Lena was everywhere. She shifted to Nakuru’s Delamere (now Moi) Flats in Milimani area and enrolled her children at St Joseph’s Primary School. She was loved by her neighbours due to her humility. At the height of her popularity, President Jomo Kenyatta bestowed on her on January 1, 1968, the Order of the Golden Heart medal for her service to the community.

  That week, when the wife of the US vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, arrived in Nairobi as part of her husband’s “listen-and-learn” Africa tour, Lena led the government delegation that received Mrs Humphrey at the Embakasi Airport, although she held no government position. Moi would arrive at the airport later to receive Mr Humprey together with then US ambassador to Kenya, Glenn Ferguson.

  With Kenyatta suffering a heart-attack in 1969, Moi (and to an extent Lena) were left to fill in for official engagements. In the mix, Moi abandoned Lena for politics, which was fast-moving and dangerously so after Tom Mboya’s assassination in 1969.

  It was in this year that he bought the Kabimoi Farm and built a house where Lena settled. Moi was also a frightened man. “He would travel anywhere, do anything, see anybody, if that was Kenyatta’s wish,” wrote Morton.

  These schedules, some of them deliberately crafted by Kenyatta allies to tire him, broke his family. He was also portrayed by his Kalenjin rivals, the likes of Jean Marie Seroney, as a sell-out to the Kikuyu.

  In 1974, Moi’s place in Kenya’s politics came under severe threat from the mandarins surrounding Kenyatta. As he was fighting for survival and getting harassed in the Rift Valley by provincial commissioner Isaiah Mathenge and roads engineer Kim Gatende on behalf of the Kiambu mafia, his marriage to Lena took a nosedive.

  Lena started disappearing slowly from the public arena and little is known on what else caused the cracks. Moi’s biographer blames politics, and there is little about Moi’s days with Lena. It leaves the reader unable to have a glimpse of the woman who bore him eight children. Instead, Moi let family friends speak of Lena.

  PUBLICLY REFUSED TO DANCE WITH KENYATTA

  Although they told Andrew Morton that the final breakup came after Lena publicly refused to dance with Kenyatta during a dinner dance at the Rift Valley Technical College, there are archival pictures to show that indeed, Kenyatta danced with Lena and Moi danced with Mama Ngina during that event.

  In his book, Morton hints that Lena, in fact, insulted Kenyatta when he asked her for the dance. “As an uncompromising Christian (Lena) believed that dancing was sinful, but the insult to the President gravely embarrassed Moi”.

  Rev Paul Barnett, who had known both Moi and Lena, was perhaps privy to the couple’s problems.

  He was the only one who agreed to be quoted talking of Lena and the breakup, but only saying: “It was for the best that they parted.”

  Lena left the vice-president’s official residence at Nairobi’s Kabarnet Gardens and retreated to the couple’s Kabimoi ranch farm in Baringo.

  The school-going children were sent to boarding schools. From here, she immersed herself into rural life, attending the local church, joining women’s groups, and keeping out of the glare of the media that she had become used to.

  With Moi settling elsewhere with their children, Lena’s hope, according to Morton, was that Moi would return one day to the matrimonial home once he was done with politics.

  He wrote: “Even today she keeps a room of the house as a shrine to her former husband, believing that when he sets aside the cares of high office, he will return…”

  It is now known that apart from Jonathan, who lived in Kabimoi with his mother, the others — Jennifer, Raymond, John Mark, Doris Elizabeth and her twin Philip, Gideon, and adopted daughter June, opted to stay with their father in Nairobi.

  LITTLE JOY FROM HIS FAMILY

  Despite this, according to his biographer, “Moi had little joy from his family… Those who know the family well observe that with the possible exception of Gideon and June, the President felt disappointed and rather let down by his children.”

  Bringing up the children, with their mother absent, took a toll on everyone in the family. Moi was also fighting to survive politically as the change-the-constitution campaign was started to block him from ascending to the presidency.

  Four years after the separation, Kenyatta died and Moi, thanks to Charles Njonjo and Mwai Kibaki, managed to outwit his political foes to get the job.

  By this time, Lena had completely vanished from the limelight.

  While some people thought this helped Moi to focus on his politics, there was an apparent silence on her whereabouts.

  Moi was frustrated that apart from Gideon and June, his other children did not appear in public when he was president to give him moral support.

  In 1979, the divorce was finalised and Lena “was accommodated in Moi’s family”. Interestingly, she was never seen at the weddings of her own children. In 1997 when her father died, Lena was kept in the background during the burial.

  After the breakup, Moi and Lena saw less and less of their children.

  “This combination of absence and sternness produced the inevitable backlash, and as adolescents, the boys rebelled against their father’s austere moral code,” wrote Morton, who says some had to be disciplined by the presidential guards.

  That Lena missed the church weddings of her children indicated the divide between her and Moi. That could explain why in August 1982, when rebel soldiers from the Airforce announced that they had deposed the president, an attempt by Moi’s bodyguards to evacuate her from Kabimoi to a secure place was met with a solid “No”.

  Moi had ordered several lorry loads of troops to her farm to evacuate her, but she told the soldiers that she had a telephone that reached from Kabimoi to heaven.

  “The men went inside and removed their caps while she knelt in supplication. As she prayed for the country, for deliverance from the enemy, and for her husband’s protection, a soldier sitting outside…yelled the news that the enemy had been defeated.”

  Lena was not about to abandon Kabimoi and this time, Moi had settled at Kabarak near Nakuru town.

  The death of Lena in July 2004 caused confusion. At first it was announced that she would be buried in Sacho.

  But this was shifted to Kabarak, where she was laid to rest on the trimmed lawns in front of the imposing bungalow where Moi lives. In death, Lena was reunited with her husband. Kenya’s would-be second First Lady had largely gone unnoticed.

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  Reply
• Ruto fixed by NSIS

  November 19, 2013 12:53

  

  http://allafrica.com/stories/201201260177.html?viewall=1

  Kenya: Detailed NSIS Reports Helped Ocampo’s Case
  By Emeka-Mayaka Gekara, 25 January 2012

  Reports filed by the national spy agency played a key role in convincing International Criminal Court judges that four suspects who now face trial in The Hague have a case to answer.

  The situation analyses by the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) were used to corroborate witness testimonies, especially relating to the violence in Naivasha, Nakuru and the North Rift.

  In their decision, the judges indicated that NSIS reports submitted to the Waki Commission which investigated the post election violence and were later passed on to the ICC prosecutor were used to reinforce arguments by witnesses who incriminated the suspects.

  NSIS Director-General Michael Gichangi testified before the Waki commission on July 21, 2008 and part of his evidence was adduced in camera.

  He said that NSIS had names of politicians who bank rolled militias to cause violence and requested to reveal their identities in private.

  “We established they were politicians who were seeking elective posts such as civic leaders and Members of Parliament as well as others from the private sector,” he said.

  ICC Pre-trial judges have committed Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Eldoret North MP William Ruto, Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura, and radio presenter Joshua arap Sang to trial in connection with 2008 killings in Naivasha, Nakuru and Rift Valley.

  Although the defence teams had hoped to demonstrate that the witnesses relied upon by the prosecution were unreliable, the Pre-Trial Chamber found that many of their assertions were backed up by official government records produced by the spy agency.

  The judges also relied on reports by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch and the Waki commission.

  The detailed analysis of the situation on the ground prior to the major attacks which took place during the weeks of mayhem also show that the government was aware of plans for violence but did little to prevent it.

  The agency indicated that by November 2007, Kalenjin youth were already harbouring plans to attack the Kikuyu and Kisii in parts of Rift Valley to disenfranchise the two communities for supporting certain politicians.

  The judges cited NSIS situation reports of January 23, 2008 which explicitly mention a suspect allegedly organising Mungiki members to attack non-Kikuyus.

  Similarly, on January 15, 2008, the NSIS reported that “Kikuyu youth in Naivasha were planning to revenge violence meted to their kinsmen in Narok by attacking the Maasai, the Luhya and the Luo in Naivasha.”

  In a January 2008 report, NSIS said that “some senior Kalenjin personalities were funding ODM activists to organise youth for violence.”

  Planned attacks

  In his testimony before the Waki commission, Major-Gen Gichangi pointed out that some youths took oaths to commit atrocities during the post-election period.

  They did this with blessings from politicians.

  As early as January 3, 2008, the spy agency had information that Mungiki members were meeting to carrying revenge attacks on Luos and Kalenjins travelling along Nairobi-Naivasha highway.”

  On January 28, 2008, it reported allegations that armed Mungiki sect members wearing police uniforms had been moving from house to house in Nakuru posing as police officers in search of members of certain communities whom they would then attack.

  Reply
• H H Nyokonze

  November 19, 2013 16:45

  

  Can Kenyans trust Kigeu-geu William Samoei Arap Ruto?After threatening EU/EK/and USA Super-powers today the same Ruto is Boot-Licking the same West! We know a Banana Failed Republic cannot survive without west Aids & Donation(There is roaming Hunger and Starvation in the Whole of NFD-!>here Ruto Surrendering just like his Grand-Papa when he was arrested and killed by Colonialist- http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2013/11/kenya-ready-to-work-with-all-donors-ruto

  Reply
• H H Nyokonze

  November 19, 2013 18:13

  

  Kabogo the governor Of Kiambuu Can threaten people and go away with it?He is above the law (jungle Kenyan Law) He is sending death threats to his juniors elected by People?You know he is the most feared drug-baron in Kenya >

  http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000096736&story_title=mcas-receive-death-threats-for-defying-kiambu-s-dying-tax

  Reply
• Ruto fixed by Karua

  November 20, 2013 03:31

  

  Reply
• Dikteta Museveni

  November 20, 2013 03:43

  

  Reply
• Joshua Sang was right

  November 20, 2013 04:21

  

  Reply
• Desperate Uhuru

  November 20, 2013 05:06

  

  http://justiceinconflict.org/2013/11/13/kenyattas-next-move-what-kenya-wants-from-the-icc/

  Reply
• Uhuruto fooling Kenyans

  November 20, 2013 05:32

  

  they were shouting from the rooftops in support of a Hague-based process when the matter came up for discussion, while a more ‘easy’ way out of a local process was available. Remember that NOBODY hauled any Kenyan to Hague, collectively we took ‘our’ people there. Moreover, lately you’ve also heard of the real faces behind the ‘fixing’, while sometime back, we were made to believe that others were responsible. Kenyans are no fools we know this is about Uhuruto protecting themselves from justice!

  Reply
• Ruto wasted Kenyans

  November 20, 2013 06:00

  

  It seems TNA is handling Ruto’s people very professionally. They are disciplined in that they are not talking except Iringo who defended himself while Ruto’s people are basically arguing with themselves. Love them or hate them, MKM makes Ruto’s people look like amateurs. The reason why Kenya’s presidency should rotate is because MKM has had too much experience running the presidency and this is not good for the country because they are chauvinistic, greedy, tribalist hegemonistic, kikuyu nationalists who want to keep everything in Nyoomba. The resentment against MKM is very high and it will rise to a certain level that the concept of ” Not another Kikuyu” presidency will reach a crescendo just like “Moi must go”. Just like too much economic discrepancy causes instability, the use of rigging elections to hegemonize power among the kikuyu will lead to instability very soon. Ruto and the Kalenjin people have done this country a very big disservice and it is up to them to start making amends. We have a very bitterly divided tribal country.

  Reply
• Raila clean like cotton

  November 20, 2013 06:11

  

  Posted Saturday, November 16, 2013 | by- Otieno Otieno

  Ruto ‘fixing’ claims expose Jubilee lie about Raila

  Gor Mahia fans love to break into a thunderous chorus whenever Raila Odinga, the former prime

  Gor Mahia fans love to break into a thunderous chorus whenever Raila Odinga, the former prime minister, makes his way into the stadium to watch a match involving the newly crowned Kenya Premier League champions.

  Onge ng’ama baba osenego… Ere ng’ama baba osenego? (There’s none that our father ever killed. Who is it that our father ever killed?)

  A corruption of a Dholuo gospel song, the chorus in its literal sense echoes the fans’ perception of Mr Odinga’s personal morality.

  But its real literary quality is in its clever disguise of heavily loaded political undertones.

  Without naming names, it pleads Mr Odinga’s innocence over the post-election violence even as it aims a jibe at his political opponents on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

  In the past five years, the former PM has been at pains to shrug off accusations by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s and Deputy President William Ruto’s supporters that it is he who “fixed” them at the ICC where the two are facing crimes against humanity charges related to the 2007/2008 post-election violence.

  It is widely believed that the successful framing of the ICC cases as a “Raila Project” by the Jubilee Alliance effectively cost Mr Odinga the presidency in the March 4, 2013 elections.

  Of course he knows better than to look to a bunch of singing zealots in a football stadium for his defence. But if Mr Odinga ever felt he needed any public vindication, he only needs to review the recent proceedings in The Hague courtroom and the dramatic falling out they are causing in Jubilee.

  Many Kenyans, long fed on that narrative about a devilish Mr Odinga scheming to eliminate his opponents from the election race using the ICC cases, must have been waiting for the moment their worst fears would be confirmed.

  Then the Ruto defence dropped the bombshell – linking senior government officials and one of President Kenyatta’s most trusted aides of procuring and coaching witnesses to implicate Mr Ruto in the post-election violence!

  Kericho Senator Charles Keter has set a fire under the Jubilee Alliance with his stubborn agitation for the resignation of the officials.

  Mr Mutea Iringo, the Interior principal secretary who was among those named as “witness coaches”, has fired a protest letter to the Ruto defence.

  True to form, Mr Karim Khan, the Queen’s Counsel leading the Ruto defence, has called Mr Iringo’s bluff.

  Despite the deep suspicions, chances are that a coalition founded on the wisdom that “we must hang together or hang separately” will survive its first major political test.

  What it won’t find easy to do is perpetuate the lie that it is Mr Odinga who fixed Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto.

  Otieno Otieno is chief sub-editor, Business Daily.

  Reply
• nsis fixed ocampo 6

  November 20, 2013 06:59

  

  How spy agency helped to nail the Ocampo Six
  By Emeka-mayaka Gekara emayaka@ke.nationmedia.com
  Posted Saturday, March 26 2011 at 22:00

  Evidence gathered by the national intelligence agency may have been used to nail post-election violence suspects waiting to appear before the International Criminal Court pre-trial judges.
  Inquiries by the Sunday Nation revealed that testimonies by the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) and provincial security officials before Justice Philip Waki’s commission on post-election violence provided valuable information for ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s case.

  While testifying before the Waki Commission, top security officials – including NSIS director general Michael Gichangi – disclosed that the agency had gathered and relayed intelligence on individuals who funded and organised gangs such as Mungiki and Kalenjin Warriors to cause chaos during the 2007 election period.

  On July 21, 2008, Gichangi testified that the NSIS had names of politicians who bankrolled the militias and requested to reveal their identities in private.

  “We established they were politicians who were seeking elective posts as civic leaders and Members of Parliament as well as others from the private sector but, because of the sensitivity of the matter, we will avail that brief to the commissioners in private,” the NSIS boss said.

  Prosecution case

  A retired state counsel, who cannot be quoted discussing intelligence matters, said that in attempts to clear itself, the NSIS may have unwittingly bolstered the prosecution’s case against the suspects.

  “The intelligence reports and testimonies would help any prosecutor … It seems that Moreno-Ocampo succeeded in transforming the NSIS information into solid evidence. The testimonies inadvertently put the suspects out to dry,” the lawyer told the Sunday Nation.

  “The NSIS documents provided critical hints for the prosecutor because they emanated from a key security arm of government. They identified prey for prosecutor.”

  Mr Moreno-Ocampo has convinced ICC judges that he has grounds to prosecute Deputy Prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta, MPs William Ruto and Henry Kosgey, Public Service head Francis Muthaura, former police chief Hussein Ali and journalist Joshua arap Sang for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 2008 violence.

  The six have been summoned to appear before the ICC judges on April 7 for an initial hearing to have the charges read to them.

  Law Society of Kenya chairman Kenneth Akide says much of the prosecutor’s evidence could be watertight because it constituted testimonies by respected state agencies such as the NSIS and assembled by skilled jurists.

  “Though the prosecutor conducted his own investigations, there is no doubt he benefited from evidence prepared by a distinguished court of appeal judge (Justice Waki) who is highly qualified to determine what sort of evidence can stand the test of a serious attack at such a high level.”

  Commit atrocities

  In his testimony, Major-Gen Gichangi pointed out that some youths took oaths to commit atrocities during the post-election period with blessings from politicians.

  The spy chief also told the commission that politicians in some parts of the country used coded language, asking their people to rise up and get rid of some communities.

  It is not known what names the spy chief revealed to the commission in camera, but the Waki report reveals his line of argument in defence of the agency.

  He said NSIS did its part to inform other security agencies of possible violence.

  It was his testimony that all relevant departments were adequately briefed, but failed to act accordingly.

  “Kenyans are still asking: ‘Where was the NSIS?’ I want to tell them that we did our part, but the State security agents failed to respond as expected because they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the violence,” said Maj-Gen Gichangi.

  The agency produced regular and special reports and security briefs at provincial and district levels in the months leading up to the 2007 General Election.

  Intelligence reports, some of which were made available to the Waki Commission and apparently transmitted to the ICC, named possible suspects for the violence in Uasin Gishu, Nakuru, Naivasha and Nairobi.

  “The documents identified various individuals suspected of being involved in such activities as inciting, planning disruption and violence and, threatening behaviour,” said the Waki Commission report.

  During his visit to Nairobi last December, the ICC prosecutor acknowledged that evidence received from the Waki Commission and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights was “fundamental” in deciding to open an investigation in Kenya.

  “We collected new evidence, new testimonies, new videos and new documents,” he said.

  The prosecutor’s investigations mainly revolve around violence in Naivasha, Eldoret and Nakuru.

  The Waki Commission also reveals that the NSIS collected information on the planning of violence in Naivasha by Mungiki members and politicians, at local and national level.

  “All NSIS evidence discussed here was produced as Exhibits 19 and 19A. Testimony produced in camera,” footnotes in the report say.

  The NSIS demonstrated that as early as January 3, 2008, it had information that Mungiki members were meeting “in an undisclosed location in Nairobi with a view to carrying revenge attacks on Luos and Kalenjins travelling along Nairobi-Naivasha highway on an undisclosed date.”

  The commission said it had evidence that government and political leaders in Nairobi, including key office holders at the highest level of government, may have directly participated in the preparation of the attacks.

  “Central to that planning were two meetings held in State House and Nairobi Safari Club in the run-up to the election with the involvement of senior members of the government and other prominent Kikuyu personalities.”

  The NSIS also gave evidence indicating that on January 15, 2008, a week before the most brutal attacks erupted in Nakuru, it established that some Mungiki members were planning to discredit the government by instigating chaos in Nakuru.

  In a January 2008 report, the Gichangi’s men said that “some senior Kalenjin personalities were funding ODM activists to organise youth for violence”.

  The agency indicated that by November 2007, Kalenjin youth were already harbouring plans to attack the Kikuyu and Kisii in parts of Rift Valley to disenfranchise the two communities for supporting certain politicians.

  When they issued summons for the six suspects to appear before them, judges in the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber said they are convinced that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Muthaura and Mr Kenyatta are criminally responsible for acts of murder, and forcible transfer committed in Nakuru and Naivasha and rapes committed in Nakuru. Mr Kenyatta is accused of teaming up with Mr Muthaura to coordinate Mungiki revenge attacks in Naivasha.

  All the three Pre-Trial Chamber judges — including dissenting Hans-Peter Kaul — were satisfied that Mr Kenyatta was “the principal contact” between the Mungiki gang and the key perpetrators. The other judges in the case are Ekaterina Trendafilova and Cuno Tarfusser.

  The judges were also convinced that Major-Gen Ali, who commanded the police at that time, was contacted by Mr Muthaura who instructed him to order the police not to interfere with the perpetration of the crimes by the Mungiki.

  The judges were also persuaded that Mr Ruto made available guns, grenades and gas cylinders and cash to perpetrators in Rift Valley and coordinated efforts before the outbreak of the violence.

  For Mr Kosgey, the judges said there was evidence to demonstrate that he promised the perpetrators immunity for the crimes, and that he distributed money to participants in meetings while Mr Sang of Kass FM used his daily talk show to spread propaganda instigating violence against the non-Kalenjins and calling for their eviction.

  http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/How+spy+agency+helped+to+nail+the+Ocampo+Six++/-/1064/1133724/-/item/0/-/frix0hz/-/index.html

  Reply
• fixing fixing

  November 20, 2013 08:19

  

  Reply
• Oppen Society Democracy.

  November 20, 2013 14:23

  

  Now Cord leaders are Working and the Kenyan People are expecting to work hard even more Hence they are waiting to see changes when a new democratic Goverment is in Place!Good Luck guys!

  Reply
• Kinyua takes Ruto job

  November 25, 2013 11:10

  

  KINYUA TAKES RUTO’S ROLE OF COORDINATION

  Monday, November 25, 2013 – 00:00 — BY STAR TEAM

  The Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua has taken some of the roles that had initially been allocated to the office of the Deputy President William Ruto.

  Kinyua is now coordinating both Cabinet Ministers and Principal Secretaries, functions that Ruto used to undertake before Kinyua’s appointment. President Kenyatta revealed Kinyua’s new role during a meeting of Cabinet and Principal Secretaries at State House last month.The President said Kinyua will, among other things, coordinate Cabinet affairs and Cabinet programmes.

  According to article 147 of the Constitution, the Deputy President is the principal assistant to the President and deputises the Head of State in the execution of the President’s function.

  “The Deputy President shall perform functions conferred to him by the constitution and any other functions of the President as the President may assign,” says article 137(2)

  Yesterday several cabinet Ministers and Principal secretaries told the Star that they are only implementing decisions given or approved by Kinyua.

  “We cannot implement any directive from the Presidency unless it is approved and signed by the President himself or Kinyua,” said a Cabinet Minister.

  Another Minister known to be close to Ruto complained that although they meet Ruto and brief him on what they are doing, all resolutions reached in meetings with Ruto must be sent to Kinyua for his approval before they are implemented.

  Three weeks ago the Star revealed that that the DP’s vote had been moved to State House while he was at attending his trial at the Hague.

  The moved sparked a flurry of meetings between Ruto, State House controller Lawrence Lenayapa, Chief off Staff in Ruto’s office Maryanne Keitanyi and Finance Minister Henry Rotich which resulted in some allocations returned to the DP’s office. Ruto’s office dismissed the story later as untrue.

  Ruto’s ally Kericho senator Charles Keter then followed up the loss of budget claims with a demand that some government officials who fixed Ruto at the ICC quit or be fired.

  Late last month MPs demanded to know if Kunyua’s appointment was legal. Although the Leader of Majority Adan Duale said the appointment was legal, MPs insisted that the appointment was illegal and unprocedural.

  The MPs said Kinyua’s role as the boss of all the country’s public servants required that he should be vetted by the National Assembly.

  Deputy Speaker Joyce Laboso who is Ruto’s close ally ordered that the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee to investigate the matter and clear the air on points of law. The Committee is yet to report back on the matter.

  Yesterday the Star further learnt that Keter, some TNA MPS and others from URP had now resolved to quietly push for the removal of Ruto’s fixers.

  The MPs have been holding meetings and plan to ask the President to dismiss the unnamed officials.”I can tell you for sure that a section of URP and TNA members are not happy with those who fixed their leaders and are now planing to meet meet both the president and his deputy to push for their sacking. What Keter said is just a tip of the iceberg and that is the position of many of Jubilee members,” he said.

  Siaya senator James Orengo is expected to name the officials if both Uhuru and Ruto will not fired them this week. “I have given President Kenyatta and William Ruto 10 days to name those who fixed the Deputy President or I do so,” he said in Kisumu last weekend.

  Reply
• Ruto denied access to NIS evidence

  November 25, 2013 20:16

  

  RUTO DENIED ACCESS TO NIS EVIDENCE

  ALLIES of Deputy President William Ruto are demanding the removal of some senior government officials because they allegedly denied Ruto access to information he needed to defend himself at the ICC.

  Ruto’s lawyers requested officials in the Office of the President to give them evidence from the National Security Intelligence Service (now NIS) but they were refused.

  “The DP’s team wanted that information which was gathered by NIS and presented to the Waki Commission. It was held by some other officers in the Office of the President but these people decided not to give us the information. How can you deny the Deputy President information? So who are they loyal to if they are not loyal to the Deputy President? It is unacceptable,” said an MP close to Ruto.

  In an attempt to clear itself of allegations of negligence around the disputed election on December 27, 2007, the NIS may have unwittingly bolstered the ICC case against Ruto and other suspects.

  The NSIS reportedly provided minutes of provincial security meetings dating from 2007/8 and other evidence to the commission of enquiry into post-election violence headed by Justice Philip Waki in 2008.

  In their testimonies to the Waki commission, security officials including Gichangi said the spy agency had gathered intelligence on individuals who organised gangs of Mungiki and Kalenjin before and after the election.

  On July 21, 2008, Gichangi testified that the NSIS had names of politicians who bankrolled the militias and requested to reveal their identities in private.

  “We established they were politicians who were seeking elective posts as civic leaders and Members of Parliament as well as others from the private sector but, because of the sensitivity of the matter, we will avail that brief to the commissioners in private,” the NSIS boss said.

  Gichangi also told the Waki Commission that youths took oaths to commit atrocities after the election with blessings from politicians. He said politicians had sometimes used coded language, asking their people to rise up and get rid of some communities.

  “I want to tell them that we did our part, but the State security agents failed to respond as expected because they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the violence,” Gichangi told Waki.

  The Waki Commission report also revealed that the NSIS collected information on the planning of violence in Naivasha by Mungiki members and politicians at local and national level.

  The NSIS evidence was included in the Waki report as Exhibits 19 and 19A but was not made public. Ruto’s allies now reportedly want to replace the NIS boss General Michael Gichangi.

  Unconfirmed reports also indicate that Gichangi is lined up to be the President Uhuru Kenyatta’s witness at the ICC when his trial begin next year in February.

  Over the weekend Kericho senator Charles Keter called for the resignation of senior officials whom he said identified and coached witnesses against Ruto.

  He did not name names but it is generally understood that Keter was referring to Interior PS Mutea Iringo and presidential chief political adviser Nancy Gitau among others. Ruto’s lawyers alleged last week in The Hague that they were involved in the collection of evidence against him in 2008.

  – See more at: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-143343/ruto-denied-access-nis-evidence#sthash.zpQTKtqa.dpuf

  Reply

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