Kenya fails to delay President Kenyatta trial

Kenya failed to win a year-long delay to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s impending trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court after a resolution backed by African states did not win sufficient support at the UN Security Council.

Eight of the 15 members abstained and seven voted in favour. Adoption would have required at least nine votes in favour and none of the five permanent council members exercising their veto power.

Although Kenya expected to lose the vote, the African Union-backed request represented the escalation of what one foreign official terms the country’s “ hardball tactic” in its battle to keep the president out of the courtroom.

Mr Kenyatta last month described the court as “the toy of declining imperial powers”, saying it represented “a fetid insult” to Africa.

Mr Kenyatta is due to take the stand at the ICC in The Hague next February, accused of financing and marshalling death squads in ethnic killings that followed Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections. His deputy president William Ruto is already on trial on similar charges.

Kenya and the African Union argued the cases should be deferred by up to a year after September’s deadly terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, arguing their absence during a lengthy trial would constitute a threat to regional peace and security.

“We feel that African countries presented most compelling arguments,” said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s representative at the Security Council following the vote. He was among seven members who supported the draft resolution, none of which are members of the ICC. He argued the failure to defer the case “risks yet another hotbed of insecurity” in Africa.

Some of those who abstained saw the vote as unnecessary and divisive. Permanent Security Council members France, the UK and US argued strongly against deferral but were not compelled to fall back on their veto because Kenya’s supporters fell two votes short of the necessary threshold.

All three argued Kenya should instead address its concerns at the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute to the ICC, to which Kenya is a signatory and which is due to meet next week. The UK, also an ICC signatory, said it will propose amendments that would make Mr Kenyatta’s attendance more simple, including the possibility of video conferencing. The meeting will also discuss whether the ICC should make sitting heads of state immune from trial.

Were Kenya to win such concessions it would mark a considerable climbdown for the ICC. “We didn’t want to see the ICC being destroyed by the Kenyan case,” said a senior foreign official.

Detractors say Mr Kenyatta’s team has erroneously portrayed the fight as one against neocolonial interests. “Pan-Africanism was about defending freedom and liberation not defending oppression,” said Gladwell Otieno, a Kenyan human rights campaigner. “This has nothing to do with African pride, it is a complete decoy. Victims are very clearly saying we want this case to go on.”

A November opinion poll of Kenyans from Ipsos Synovate found only 2 per cent of Kenyans want Mr Kenyatta’s case to be deferred for a year, while two-thirds of Kenyans still want him to attend trial.

A letter last month signed by Kenyan civil society organisations to the UN Security Council read: “The ICC is the only existing credible deterrent to a repeat of events similar to the [2008 post-election violence] on a mass scale.”