Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, has asked for a three-month postponement in the trial for the case against the president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta. The trial, already postponed several times, was to have started on Feb. 5, 2014.
Kenyatta was accused of being an indirect co-perpetrator for crimes against humanity, including murder, deportation or forcible transfer, rape and persecution committed in post-election violence in Kenya in 2007-2008, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed.
“My decision is based solely on the specific facts of this case devoid of extraneous considerations,” Bensouda said in a statement released Dec. 19 by her office at the court, known as the ICC.
“As Prosecutor, I have consistently stated my actions and decisions are at all times strictly guided by the evidence in accordance with the Rome Statute legal framework. This recent decision is no different.”
The case, which Bensouda inherited from her predecessor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has been deeply problematic from the start. It attracted worldwide attention for prosecuting a sitting head of state and has suffered from a dearth of key, reliable witnesses as well as witnesses dropping out after being threatened or bribed.
Kenya voted on plans to withdraw its membership from the Rome Statute, the court’s governing treaty, and the African Union criticized the tribunal, the only permanent court in the world to try atrocity crimes, for its “misuse of indictments against African leaders,” even though most of the court’s investigations in Africa were based on requests from countries there.
More recently, Kenya and other African countries lobbied the United Nations Security Council to intervene to postpone the trial for a year, so that Kenyatta could ensure the stability of his country after the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi. That strategy fell flat with the Council.
Bensouda said that in the last two months, a key prosecution witnesses in the case against Kenyatta indicated that he was not willing to testify. More recently, on Dec. 4, a key second witness confessed to giving false evidence regarding a critical event in the prosecution’s case, so his testimony is no longer valid. That leaves 28 other witnesses for the prosecution. In a video from the spokesman for the court, Fadi El Abdallah explains the adjournment, also noting that Kenyatta’s office has not complied with certain requests for information from the ICC prosecutor for the trail, including providing bank records from 2007-2008.
Bensouda, who started her nine-year term in June 2012, concluded that the case against Kenyatta “does not satisfy the high evidentiary standards required at trial” and she therefore needed more time gather additional evidence and to consider whether such evidence will “meet the evidentiary threshold required at trial.”
The case against William Ruto, Kenya’s deputy president, and Joshua Arap Sang, a Kenyan radio announcer, which began on Sept. 10, 2013, continues. Both men are accused of crimes against humanity also allegedly committed in Kenya in the 2007-2008 post-election violence.
[This article was updated on Dec. 20, 2013.]
Related articles
The International Criminal Court Fends Off ‘Ferocious’ Attack, Says the Prosecutor
Support incisive journalism about women’s issues at the UN.
PassBlue has launched a new fundraising campaign. Please take a look. ALL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE.
Dulcie Leimbach is a co-founder, with Barbara Crossette, of PassBlue. For PassBlue and other publications, Leimbach has reported from New York and overseas from West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) and from Europe (Scotland, Sicily, Vienna, Budapest, Kyiv, Armenia, Iceland and The Hague). She has provided commentary on the UN for BBC World Radio, ARD German TV and Radio, NHK’s English channel, Background Briefing with Ian Masters/KPFK Radio in Los Angeles and the Foreign Press Association.
Previously, she was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association of the USA. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years, editing and writing for most sections of the paper, including the Magazine, Book Review and Op-Ed. She began her reporting career in small-town papers in San Diego, Calif., and Boulder, Colo., graduating to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and then working at The Times. Leimbach has been a fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies as well as at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; taught news reporting at Hofstra University; and guest-lectured at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the CUNY Journalism School. She graduated from the University of Colorado and has an M.F.A. in writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
