The mystery on a letter petitioning the United Nations to
terminate the ICC charges facing President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy
President William Ruto threatens to be the biggest test to face their
Jubilee government.
The chief government legal adviser could neither deny nor confirm if the President was aware of the letter.
Said Attorney-General Githu Muigai: “We were not
aware the letter had been written… we have been pursuing the case with
the court and worked closely with the president of the court, the
registrar and the prosecutor.”
Multiple sources told Saturday Nation the letter
by Kenya’s ambassador to UN Macharia Kamau on May 2 was traced to senior
civil servants in the Kibaki administration.
Last evening, questions were still lingering on
who authorised Mr Kamau to write the letter and whether Mr Ruto’s
denouncement signified a split between the two men over the strategy of
handling the cases facing them at the International Criminal Court.
While Mr Ruto has unequivocally denounced the
petition through lawyer Karim Khan, President Kenyatta had not
commented on the matter as we went to press.
Prof Muigai said the government wanted the matter
settled expeditiously by the court, but added that ambassadors had an
independent mandate.
“The government applied to co-operate with the
court and we were granted. In pursuit of this, a high powered government
delegation will be at The Hague next Wednesday to meet court
officials,” he disclosed.
On Wednesday, a letter sent by Mr Kamau to the
Security Council became subject of debate with Rwanda’s amabassador to
the UN accusing the International Criminal Court of bias in execution of
its mandate.
The strongly worded 13-page letter was circulated
among members of the United Nations Security Council ahead of the visit
by the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who was before the Council to
brief it on a Libyan case.
“We thus ask the UN Security Council to take the
much-needed political stance that Kenya must be given the time and
opportunity to apply the principle of pre-eminence of national courts.
The security council has a duty and obligation to assist Kenya overcome
this serious politically sensitive and potentially destabilising and
disabling situation,” the letter said. It then concluded that the Kenyan
delegation was not asking for a deferral, but the immediate termination
of the case at The Hague.
Saturday Nation has learnt that Ms Bensouda did
not meet the Security Council to talk about the Kenyan cases but was
briefing the Council on the Libyan case when an impromptu exchange on
Kenya came up from Rwanda’s intervention.
Rwandan envoy Eugene-Richard Gasana had remarked
on Wednesday’s Council meeting that the letter made “a compelling case
against the methods of work of the office of the prosecutor on the
Kenyan cases.”
He accused the ICC of being “selective in its
methods of investigating and prosecuting perpetrators of serious
international crimes as it has failed to prosecute similar crimes
committed in other parts of the world.”
Sources told Saturday Nation that Mr Khan on Thursday called Mr Ruto and advised him that the petition could be injurious to their cases.
“It was then that the Deputy President okayed him
to send out the denouncement distancing himself from the letter,” said
an MP, a close ally of Mr Ruto.
Mr Khan said: “I have spoken to my client, Mr
William Ruto, and I can confirm and he has made it clear that he was not
consulted on anything to do with New York. A letter being circulated is
not government policy,” Mr Khan said in a telephone interview.”
He said that Mr Ruto believes in the rule of law and in Kenya observing its international obligations.
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