Secrets of the Waki list

Prominent politicians are named in a secret list in a sealed envelope to be presented to former UN secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday.

Contents of the envelope, the Nation learnt, include six current ministers and five MPs, who, it is recommended, should face a special international tribunal set to be named within 60 days.

If the tribunal is not set up in time, the envelope will be handed to the International Court of Justice at the Hague so they can be prosecuted for their part in the post-election violence that threatened to tear Kenya apart.

Former minister

The list also contains seven former MPs, including a minister from the Rift Valley Province who has since died, and a former minister from Nyanza Province.

Others are prominent businessmen from Central and Rift Valley provinces, whose communities were bitter rivals during election campaigns.

One of the prominent leaders is listed as having sponsored a gang of youths to attack rivals during campaigns. The same leader secured their freedom after they were arrested.

The other prominent politician is among leaders accused of sponsoring outlawed Mungiki sect members to unleash terror in Nakuru and Naivasha.

He was among business people who held secret meetings to raise funds for revenge attacks against the Luo, Luhya and Kalenjin.

Others who helped him included two former Central Rift region MPs and a prominent Nakuru businessman. 

All their names were withdrawn at the last minute from the official report presented to President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Wednesday.

Instead their names and the evidence gathered against them by the Waki Commission were stuffed in an envelope and sealed.

The decision was taken by the Commission of Inquiry into Post Election Violence, headed by Court of Appeal judge Philip Waki to prevent the culprits from interfering with evidence, ahead of the tribunal’s investigations.

And when the tribunal is finally set up, it will take another six months to prosecute those responsible for the violence.

The Special Tribunal for Kenya will be a court that will seek accountability against people bearing the greatest responsibility for crimes relating to the controversial elections last year.

Mr Annan is due to receive the report and the envelope with the names of the suspects, in his capacity as the man who brokered a peace deal that ended the mayhem that left over 1,100 people dead.

Politicians who contested last year’s General Election, some of whom are listed in the envelope, are also blamed for precipitating the violence by “conducting campaigns in a strident and confrontational manner”.

They cast the Majimbo (federalism) debate in an ethnically divisive manner and failed to create confidence among voters around the electoral process and institutions.

The list was drawn following five months of hearings and investigations by the Waki Commission.

Predicted violence

The team also scrutinised reports by the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS), which accurately predicted the violence through reports handed to Government officials who had little to show that they utilised them.

Before the General Election, the agency correctly analysed the forces at work in the country and said that in the case of either a Mwai Kibaki or Raila Odinga loss, there was a strong possibility of post-election violence, the worst case scenario being if the ODM candidate lost.

The violence in Naivasha between January 27 and 30 was pre-planned and executed by Mungiki members who received the support of political and business leaders.

“The Commission has also 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,” according to the report.

“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,”  it states.

Also linked to the Nakuru and Naivasha attacks were a Nairobi MP who has since died and another from Kiambu.

Three Cabinet ministers are said to be on the list with one of them accused of having secretly called for the removal of outsiders who he referred to as madoa madoa, a phrase meant to mean people who were considered “outsiders”.

One politician was accused of holding a closed door meeting at his house, promising “to go on with the violence” after which “the road to Eldoret Town was blocked and the violence went on”.

Instigate killings

An MP from the North Rift is accused of ferrying “militias in lorries owned by another local politician to attack the Kiambaa church near Eldoret — which was burnt at the height of violence.

A former MP from the region was accused of touring the Kesses area where he told residents they should get rid of “outsiders”, according to an NSIS report.

In a report of January 8, 2008, the NSIS said some four senior Kalenjin personalities were funding ODM activists during the violence.

Earlier in October, NSIS named a number of ODM leaders who, it claimed, were planning to instigate killings in Kuresoi, Olenguruone and Molo targeting the Kikuyu community for showing support for President Kibaki

In Nakuru, a former MP was accused of organising Mungiki members to attack non-Kikuyu people living in the  town, according to the NSIS report.

Three ODM MPs, one of whom has since died, are also accused of having asked people close to the Kenya-Tanzania and Kenya-Uganda borders to close the roads so that Tanzania and Uganda would respectively complain of lack of fuel supply through Kenya thus bringing pressure to bear on President Kibaki to resign.

The spy agency said one of the MPs told the Kipsigis to continue with the fighting.

Communal violence

Some Central province MPs are accused of holding several planning meetings to recruit fighters, to coordinate communal violence and to organise funding.

The report said some church leaders used the pulpit to convey messages amounting to hate speech against non-Kikuyu communities in Central province.

According to the report, some of the violence witnessed during post-election violence was spontaneous. Violence was in part a spontaneous reaction to the perceived rigging of elections, it said.

“In areas like the Rift Valley and the Coast, it targeted members of the Kikuyu and Kisii communities perceived to be associated with the PNU party and with President Kibaki considered to be the beneficiaries of the “robbed” election, it said.

But in Nyanza and Western, violence was mostly directed towards Government facilities and gradually took the form of looting and destruction.

More than 350,000 people fled from their homes in the violence that followed President Kibaki being declared the winner of the December 27 General Election, as the Opposition protested.