Muthaura, Uhuru defence lay blame for violence on Ali

A last-minute letter by Internal Security minister George Saitoti appears to have unwittingly heaped blame for the 2008 violence on former police commissioner Hussein Ali.

The letter introduced by lawyer Karim Khan for Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura was intended to clarify that his client was not in control of the police force.

According to the Saitoti letter, Maj-Gen Ali, the then police commissioner, was fully in charge of the force accused of participating in the Naivasha and Nakuru violence.

Add to the troubles

This would appear to add to the troubles of the former police commissioner, initially seen as in a slightly better position as he is facing the lesser charge of being a co-perpetrator of the crimes.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has argued that Mr Muthaura exercised considerable control over the police.

The former police commissioner is caught in a battle for survival with Mr Muthaura and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, each determined to distance himself from police activities during the 2008 violence.

Perhaps inadvertently, Mr Kenyatta’s defence team also ran a video clip capturing Prime Minister Raila Odinga alleging that the government had given police order to shoot to kill. 

This argument could reinforce the prosecution’s premise on the contribution of the Ali-commanded police to killings.  

The prosecutor alleges that Mr Kenyatta and Mr Muthaura used their influence to transport Mungiki militiamen to the Rift Valley to carry out retaliatory attacks. Mr Muthaura is alleged to have asked Maj-Gen Ali to ensure that the police did not interfere with the activities of Mungiki. (READ:Uhuru organised Kenya chaos, ICC judges told)

The former police commissioner’s burden may be increased if the Pre-Trial Chamber accepts the prosecutor’s plans to add more charges in his case.

The prosecutor on Wednesday indicated that he plans to apply for the reinstatement of charges – which the judges dropped earlier because of insufficient evidence – relating to violence meted out by police in Kisumu and in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, mainly killings and rape.

Reinstate charges

If he applies to reinstate charges after the pre-trial hearings, it would mean another episode of confirmation of charges hearings for them.

Mr Ocampo was responding to concerns raised by NGOs in the justice sector who had accused his office of letting down victims of sexual violence by conducting inadequate investigations.

“Some NGOs and lawyers will have different views,” he said. “The main thing is that I have to search for the evidence, and the judges make their decisions. Unfortunately on this one they made the decision they did. I agree that Kisumu and Kibera are very important and very serious. In fact, we have uncovered new evidence, and we know that some of those in Kibera were Mungiki in police uniform. We will revisit this.”

At a press conference on Wednesday in The Hague, the NGOs urged the office of the prosecutor to reopen investigations into the sexual crimes committed in Kibera and Kisumu after the 2007 elections, saying victims had been let down by Mr Ocampo’s investigative team.

“Our review of the reasons judges keep rejecting gender-based violence charges are the generous use of secondary material and public reports by the office of the prosecutor,” said Ms Brigid Inder, the executive director of Hague-based Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice.

“We have condemned this over-reliance on secondary material and would like the office of the prosecutor to carry out more primary investigations,” she added, saying 33 per cent of gender-based violence crimes brought before the court in the last year had been dropped.

The criticism of the prosecutor by the civil society groups is notable because it comes from a group of NGOs dedicated to the support of the work of the ICC.

The press conference where they spoke was convened by the Coalition of the International Criminal Court (CICC), which works to encourage support for justice for victims of crimes against humanity.