Ocampo revelations exposing hypocrisy of ICC, opponents

International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo speaks during a news conference at The Hague on May 16, 2011. He has been accused of poorly handling the case against President Uhuru Kenyatta who was accused of crimes against humanity. PHOTO | ROBERT VOS | AFP

What you need to know:

  • Yet had it not been for Ocampo’s determination to hear the Kenyan cases, Mr  Kenyatta and Mr William Ruto might not have won the 2013 elections.

  • It appeared that the international court was unfairly targeting the numerically and politically significant Kikuyu-Kalenjin bloc.

Revelations that Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, was compromised by people who were suspected to be war criminals, should interest Kenyans because they do raise the question of whether the Kenyan cases at the ICC were similarly undermined.

Documents leaked by Mediapart, a French investigative website, and the German magazine Der Spiegel suggest that Ocampo may have been bribed by a Libyan billionaire who was involved in their civil war and that he may have interfered with the court’s investigations by revealing confidential information about Muammar Gaddafi to the French Government.

The revelations expose a dark, devious and egotistical side to this Argentinian lawyer who had promised to “make an example of Kenya” when he was pursuing cases again the so-called Ocampo Six, who were charged with post-election violence, and whose cases were bungled so badly by the ICC that the six suspects ended up “making an example” of the ICC instead.

MOVE FORWARD

It appears that the Kenyan cases did not move forward not just because of lack of sufficient evidence but also because Ocampo – after initially pushing hard for the cases to be heard – nudged his former colleagues to give Uhuru Kenyatta an “honourable exit” after he became president, and even advised a Kenyan diplomat about how the case could be closed without damaging the ICC’s reputation. 

Yet had it not been for Ocampo’s determination to hear the Kenyan cases, Mr  Kenyatta and Mr William Ruto might not have won the 2013 elections. His obsessive zeal to take the duo to the ICC polarised the country ethnically.

It appeared that the international court was unfairly targeting the numerically and politically significant Kikuyu-Kalenjin bloc. The UhuRuto campaign exploited this victimisation narrative to garner votes in 2013 (though the jury of public opinion is still out on whether that election was free and fair.)

RECONCILIATION

Meanwhile, arguments by the Ugandan political scientist Mahmoud Mamdani that a post-conflict political reconciliation between warring factions was preferable to a judicial process in an international court were met with fury and disdain. The ICC and some prominent Kenyan activists would hear none of it.

The revelations also lay bare the hypocrisy of some African leaders who vilify the ICC as “racist”, yet use it when it suits them. When Jubilee won the 2013 elections, President Yoweri Museveni described its victory as “a rejection of the blackmail by the ICC and those who seek to abuse this institution for their own agenda”. Yet the Ugandan president has no problem with the ICC prosecuting the Lord’s Resistance Army’s Dominic Ongwen, who as a child soldier was himself a victim of the LRA.

The Ocampo revelations have exposed the hypocrisy of both the ICC and its opponents.

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 Dear Hassan Omar,

They say that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies in politics, but your defection to the Jubilee Party last week indicates that is it not friendship or enmity that is at stake here but integrity.

OPPOSITION

There are few politicians in this country, both in the ruling party and in the opposition, who display high levels of moral uprightness.

The majority of our leaders have sold their souls to the devil so many times that it is hard to tell what side of the political divide they are on.

I truly believed that you were different. You stood out as a person who believed in truth and human dignity. But your actions suggest that you were never interested in promoting human rights or social justice; you only crave power and wealth.

ALLIANCES

Nobody is saying that you do not have the right to switch political allegiances; but changing political alliances is not the same as changing one’s beliefs. If what you claim to have stood for in the past can be so easily be forgotten, then I shudder to think what you may say – and not mean – next.

Power is not always obtained through the ballot box or the bullet. Some of the most powerful people in this world hold no political office nor do they commandeer armies. However, their influence will be felt even after their death because their ideas, convictions or inventions are so life-affirming or revolutionary that they have changed the world for the better. You might have been such a person. Alas, you have lost that opportunity!