PRESIDENT Uhuru Kenyatta says top
officials of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights doctored their own
report on the post-election violence to save Raila Odinga from prosecution.
Uhuru maintained that the damning
report the ICC heavily relied on for his prosecution at The Hague was
undependable and partisan, citing the alleged alteration that spared Raila.
The President insisted that KNCHR
officials, then led by human rights crusader Maina Kiai, ordered the quashing
of their initial report that had explicitly named Raila as one of the
masterminds of the 2007-08 violence.
“KNCHR, in the first draft of the
report, included Raila Odinga, the ODM leader, in the table of alleged
post-election violence perpetrators, and recommended further investigations and
his subsequent possible prosecution,” Uhuru said.
Uhuru was responding through his
lawyer, Stephen Kay QC, to Bensouda's potentially damaging allegations in his
now- defunct case.
On Monday, Bensouda released a
69-page Pretrial Brief that made serious allegations against top leaders in
retired President Mwai Kibaki's administration, including Kibaki.
In the 27-page response sent to the
ICC on Wednesday night, Kay went on: “However, ODM-sympathising KNCHR officers
ordered that report to be quashed. In the edited report, Raila Odinga was not
included in the table recommending further investigation or prosecution.”
TNA politicians have for some time
now accused Raila of conspiring with the ICC to have his competition eliminated
in the last election.
Raila, who is away in India on an
official tour, has consistently denied involvement in any conspiracy. Yesterday
a number of people close to him insisted that Uhuru's allegations were
unfounded.
"These allegations are
baseless," said ODM chairman John Mbadi.
Bensouda claimed that a team of
senior PNU officials bankrolled the outlawed Mungiki sect, who went on a
killing spree, raped women, burnt houses and forcibly circumcised ODM
supporters in Naivasha and Nakuru.
She claimed that Uhuru, Kibaki,
Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Kimemia and the late Security minister John
Michuki were central in the planning of the attacks.
But in what seems to be a
tit-for-tat tactic, Uhuru roped in Raila, saying that in the earlier KNHCR
draft the Cord leader was alleged to have incited people at a political rally
in his Nyanza home turf of Migori.
“Raila Odinga was alleged to have
incited people in Migori at a political rally by uttering the words, ‘we do not
want madoadoa’, and that the phrase was understood to mean that other
communities were unwanted in Migori,” the British lawyer stated.
The KNCHR report titled On the Brink
of the Precipice: A Human Rights Account of Kenya’s 2007 Post-Election
Violence, mentioned many top ODM and PNU officials in connection with the
violence.
Uhuru said that Bensouda was
desperate to nail his then PNU axis and in the process became unprofessional,
relying on what he termed “hearsay, rumours and gossip”.
According to Kay, the ICC case was
grounded on three witnesses whose testimony was used in the confirmation of
charges. These are Witness 4, 11 and 12.
However, he insisted that, despite
their evidence being fundamentally flawed, prominent human rights campaigners
in Kenya encouraged them to testify against the President to further their
campaign against PNU and Kenyatta.
A document authored by Uhuru’s
lawyers which Kay also sent to the ICC on Wednesday named prominent activists
and civil society officials as among the “evil society” that were out to fix
Uhuru at The Hague.
Intriguingly, the info-graphic
document named even Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and his chief of staff Duncan
Okello. Others named are newspaper opinion columnists David Ndii, Makau Mutua,
George Kegoro and Kiai.
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