Witnesses Withdraw from ICC Case Against Kenyan President

Is this how the International Criminal Court’s case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta will end? Via Voice of America: Two witnesses in the International Criminal Court case against Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta have withdrawn their testimony, with at least one saying he would be in danger if he testified, according to a court document published ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Is this how the International Criminal Court's case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta will end? Via Voice of America:

Is this how the International Criminal Court’s case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta will end? Via Voice of America:

The withdrawal of the two witnesses, who were not named in a redacted public version of the filing, is another blow to prosecutors.

They are struggling to pin charges of crimes against humanity on Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto, who they say orchestrated post-election violence five years ago in which 1,200 people were killed.

Prosecutors were forced to drop their case agaisnt [sic] Kenyatta’s co-accused, civil servant Francis Muthaura, in March, with chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda saying witnesses were either dead or too afraid to testify.

“The case against Kenyatta has already been very shaky since the witness withdrew in the Muthaura case, so the question is whether this will be enough to push it over the edge,” said William Schabas, a law professor at Britain’s Middlesex University.

I’ve argued previously that the Kenyan government appears to be playing a quite clever game on the ICC. It is formally maintaining cooperation and avoiding a direct standoff with the court while apparently doing what it can to hollow out the cases against the president and deputy president. On several occasions, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said as much, blasting the Kenyan government for its lack of cooperation. Also troubling for the court, public support for the ICC in Kenya — which used to be robust — shows signs of dropping. 

I’d be very curious to know what Kenyan officials are hearing from their Western counterparts about the cases. I’m sure they are being urged to cooperate with the court, but I doubt that the pressure is intense. My guess — and it’s only a guess — is that many Western diplomats would be quietly relieved if the cases disappeared. 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

Tags: ICC, Kenya

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