PRESIDENT UHURU MUIGAI KENYATTA OF KENYA
SAN FRANCISCO, December 08, (THEWILL) – Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta has been accused by the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Netherlands of withholding his bank statements to the court to enable the prosecutor establish the allegation that he financed crimes against humanity during the 2007 elections in Kenya.
The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, in an application dated December 2, is asking the court to hold that Kenya was in breach of Article 87(7) of the Rome Statute which requires states’ parties to help the court with necessary information.
ICC relies mainly on the states’ cooperation without which it cannot fulfill its mandate.
Bensouda is asking the court to hold that the “Government of Kenya has failed to comply with Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) April 2012 request to produce financial and other records of the accused.
“These records are relevant to critical issues in this case, and may shed light on the scope of the accused’s conduct , including the allegation that he financed the crimes with which he is charged.”
Bensouda accused Kenya of giving flimsy excuses for not making the records available.
“For 19 months, the OTP’s repeated requests have been met with obfuscation and intransigence,” she said as she explained that with less than two months before trial started, Kenyatta’s financial records remained outstanding.
“The net effect of Kenya’s inaction has been to limit the body of evidence available to the Trial Chamber, hindering it’s fact-finding function and ability to determine the truth. It has also limited the OTP’s ability to investigate all the facts in this case,” she said.
Bensouda said she had traveled to Kenya and appealed at the highest level to produce the financial records but to no avail.
“On October 22, 2012, the Prosecutor traveled to Kenya to appeal at the highest level. In a meeting with then President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga, the Prosecutor highlighted the outstanding records request, specifying the information requested and the date of the request, and received assurances of the continued willingness of the Government of Kenya to ensure timely and effective compliance with the outstanding requests,” a statement from Bensouda’s office said.
“The prosecutor stressed the urgency of the request and expressed her strong desire to receive the requested information by November 30, 2012.”
She lamented that notwithstanding the assurance, Kenya had failed to meet her November 30th, 2012 deadline for the records,saying she had exhausted all possible measures to ensure the cooperation of Kenya all to no avail.
“The Government of Kenya’s responses to the Prosecutor’s repeated requests for records suggest that it has not made a genuine effort to retrieve them.
“Kenya is the situation country, and therefore relevant and probative documentary evidence for the prosecution’s case can be found in Kenya. Critical evidence that could incriminate or exculpate the accused-such as the financial records- is accessible to the prosecution only through the effective assistance of the Government of Kenya,” Bensouda said.
She is therefore asking the court to hold that Kenya had failed to execute OTP’s most important request for evidence in the case.
Click Here For – Prosecution application for finding of noncompliance – Dec 2 2013 (1) –
