Ocampo targets PNU and ODM

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has accused leaders from across Kenya's political divide and businessmen over their role in the post-election violence.

Details of Mr Moreno-Ocampo’s submission to the Pre-Trial Chamber show how the suspects planned and executed what he refers to as a “criminal policy” against civilians.

Their motivation, he says, was to retain or gain power. Some 1,133 people were killed and more than 650,000 evicted from their homes in the wake of the madness that followed Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election.

President Kibaki of the Party of National Unity was said to have won the election but his rival, Mr Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement, disputed the victory saying the poll had been stolen.

Also targeted by Mr Moreno-Ocampo are Kenya’s security forces, whom he accuses of using excessive force against civilians. Mr Moreno-Ocampo says the 20 leading suspects hired, financed and transported gangs to kill, destroy and block roads.

“Many of the political leaders from both sides that incited the attacks are also rich businessmen or land owners and contributed financially to attacks from their own resources,” said Mr Moreno-Ocampo in his submission.

He told judges at The Hague on Wednesday that while PNU used State agencies, their opponents in ODM used criminal gangs to execute their politically motivated schemes.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo has asked the judges, in the 19-page submission, to keep the lists of suspects confidential. Naming the suspects publicly, he says, may prejudice independent investigations and endanger the safety of potential witnesses.

“A precise determination of the extent and nature of the links between the individuals allegedly involved and the public and private organisations utilised to allegedly commit the crimes will be made during the course of an independent investigation by the prosecutor, if authorised,” Mr Moreno-Ocampo tells the judges in his submission.

He adds that Kenyan authorities had not carried out any investigations or prosecutions targeting the 20. The submission, which borrows a lot from the Waki and Kenya National Commission on Human Rights reports, indicts Kenya’s security forces.

The prosecutor says the violence comprised hundreds of incidents with varying degrees of organisation. Inflammatory statements and hate speech disseminated via radio, e-mails, and SMS before the elections were part of the strategy to incite the public, he says.

Tribal networks

PNU and ODM channelled their criminal policy through community structures, he says. The “senior leaders from both parties were guided by political objectives to retain or gain power,” Mr Moreno-Ocampo says, noting that they used personal, government, business and tribal networks to commit the crimes.

The violence, he says, followed a consistent pattern. ODM leaders, he submits, set in motion two parallel attacks to protest against the announcement that President Kibaki had won the elections. “Whereas the party officially called for peaceful mass demonstrations, some influential party leaders especially in the Rift Valley Province launched attacks against civilians perceived to be supporters of PNU,” the document states.

And PNU, which was at the time in government, responded by using excessive police force against demonstrators. This violence, the ICC prosecutor says, was particularly in opposition strongholds of Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces.