Trial of Kenya vice-president William Ruto starts at ICC

The International Criminal Court in The Hague opened its highest-profile trial on Tuesday, with William Ruto, Kenyan deputy president, in the dock and dozens of members of his government attending to show support.

Mr Ruto and Joshua Sang, a former radio station presenter, are accused of orchestrating violence after the flawed 2007 presidential election in Kenya that left more than 1,100 people dead and drove some 660,000 from their homes. After their candidate lost, they allegedly directed gangs from their own Kalenjin ethnicity to attack members of the Kikuyu tribe, who largely backed the winning PNU party.

Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, said Mr Ruto and Mr Sang had organised a “carefully planned, co-ordinated and executed campaign of violence targeting perceived PNU supporters” among the Kikuyu. She said they aimed to create a homogenous Kalenjin voting bloc in Kenya’s Rift Valley region to enhance the political power of Mr Ruto and the party he backed, the ODM.

Both Mr Sang and Mr Ruto, who appeared confident in a dark suit and red-and-white striped tie, pleaded not guilty to each of three charges of crimes against humanity: murder, forcible transfer of population, and persecution.

Mr Ruto’s defence counsel, Karim Khan, called the prosecution’s case “lazy” and biased, saying it is largely based on politically charged testimony that emerged in national reconciliation discussions in the years after the election.

The case marks the first time the 10-year-old ICC has put such a high-ranking sitting political leader on trial. The court has come under fire for its slow pace, which has produced only one conviction so far.

The case is also a dry run for the trial in November of Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, accused of playing a key role in stoking the violence on the opposite side. Ironically, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto are now political allies, and both used rising nationalist opposition to the court to their advantage.

Some 30 members of Kenya’s parliament and numerous members of government attended the opening day of the trial to show support for Mr Ruto. The trial has become a political football in Kenya, with the country’s parliament voting this month to withdraw from the ICC, though the vote has no authority and the government says it will continue co-operating with the court.

Both of the accused have voluntarily appeared at the court.

Mr Ruto and Mr Sang are charged not with having themselves committed violence, but as “indirect co-perpetrators” who played key roles in instigating it. The prosecution alleges Mr Ruto organised militant groups and supplied them with weapons in advance of the elections, and of giving the order to begin attacks after his party lost the elections.

Mr Sang is accused of using his radio station to advertise the militant groups’ meetings and of inciting violence by broadcasting inflammatory propaganda and anti-Kikuyu hate speech.

[We do] not want witnesses to withdraw. We want witnesses to come and speak

The prosecution’s case will depend heavily on its ability to produce witnesses to testify that the accused played key roles in planning meetings for the violence. But several have withdrawn in recent months, citing security fears, and Ms Bensouda has alleged that they are being subjected to an organised campaign of intimidation by unidentified parties.

Mr Khan, citing Mr Ruto’s co-operation and statements of support for the ICC’s investigation, said he “does not want witnesses to withdraw. We want witnesses to come and speak”. He said the allegations were a “smokescreen” to conceal the weakness of the prosecution’s case.

The prosecution devoted much of its time on Tuesday morning to recalling the violence that struck Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008, when the country seemed on the verge of civil war.

In the Rift Valley area, where Mr Ruto had his power base and where the crimes he is charged with took place, Kalenjin militants travelled from village to village, seeking out Kikuyus and attacking them with arrows and machetes, among other weapons. In a particularly grievous incident, a church in the village of Kiambaa where Kikuyu families had sought refuge was surrounded and burnt down by Kalenjin militants, killing between 17 and 35 people.

More than 200 victims perished in the Rift Valley, while between 200,000 and 400,000 people were displaced, according to prosecution figures.

Ms Bensouda stressed that the ICC’s investigation went ahead in 2011 only after the court determined that Kenyan authorities would not take judicial action over the violence. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general who brokered Kenyan reconciliation talks in 2008, made the same point in an opinion piece on Monday.

Human rights advocates have also made the same point. Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the trial “tackles an impunity crisis in the country and offers a chance for justice denied to Kenyans by their own government”.

That view is not universally shared. The presiding judge in the case, Chile Eboe-Osuji of Nigeria, noted that one judge, who is no longer participating in the case, wrote a dissenting opinion at an earlier stage of the trial arguing that the crimes in Kenya should have remained at the level of national courts.

Mr Ruto and Mr Sang will remain in The Hague for at least the next three weeks while the trial’s first stage is under way, after the court rejected earlier appeals by Mr Ruto to return earlier to Kenya to fulfil his duties as vice-president. The trial is expected to last for years.