MUITE TAKES KIBAKI TO THE HAGUE!

THE STANDARD
NAIROBI, KENYA
April 9, 2009

The Standard Team

President Kibaki appeared to reel from one headache to another when former Kabete MP Paul Muite declared he had written to the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, asking them to investigate and prosecute the President over extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances.

A day after he jetted back in the country from Zambia to find resignation letters from Justice Minister Martha Karua and Assistant Medical Services Minister Danson Mungatana — in addition to a basketful of complaints from the ODM side of the Grand Coalition — it appeared the President would get no reprieve just yet.

And following Wednesday, Muite’s claims, the police ordered that the former Kabete MP records a statement at the CID headquarters in Nairobi to "put substance to his wild allegations".

"Due to the seriousness of his allegations, Paul Muite is directed to come to CID headquarters on Kiambu Road on April 9 (today)," said Police Spokesman Eric Kiraithe.

Kiraithe dismissed Muite, who also fingered Environment minister John Michuki and Commissioner of Police Hussein Ali in his letter to the ICC, as among the "politically frustrated individuals" seeking to revive careers through "unorthodox means of seeking publicity."

At a Press conference in Nairobi, Muite said his life was in danger. But Kiraithe was quick to dismiss the claim as false and politically motivated.

Muite, a Senior Counsel, claimed Kibaki bore responsibility for the high crimes he alleged issued from a "policy of extermination" implemented by his Internal Security minister and Commissioner of Police between 2006 and recent times.

Muite claimed the Kwekwe squad, blamed for much of the extra-judicial killings in recent years, was still alive and composed of 14 members "now planning to kill him over his vocal opposition to these crimes and dispute between him, Kibaki and Cabinet minister John Michuki over the March 2006 state-sponsored raid on the Standard Group.

Social life

Muite said he received credible information about the plan on his life on Sunday from police sources in the death squad. He alleged that the information had disrupted his social life and that he was being trailed by "strange" cars.

He, however, vowed not to be intimidated nor forced to flee the country, saying he would instead co-operate with ICC investigators if and when the ICC sends them to Kenya.

Yesterday, Muite’s lawyer Gitobu Imanyara, who sat besides his pensive client, accused Kibaki and his entourage of "criminalisation of the nation" through state sanctioned murder. He claimed that four senior police officers were dissatisfied with the policy of state sanctioned extermination.

Muite’s petition to Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, said Kibaki, as Commander-in-Chief of Kenya’s Armed Forces, bore responsibility for the killing and enforced disappearances of more than 600 youths in Central Kenya, Mount Elgon, Nairobi and other parts of country.

Delivered through Fedex, the petition dated April 8 wants Ocampo to invoke Article 28(b) of the Rome Statute (that creates the ICC) which ascribes criminal responsibility to commanders for crimes committed by subordinates when it can be demonstrated that superiors or commanders ignored the commission of heinous crimes by junior officials or refused or failed to take reasonable measures to stem gross violations.

Wide scale

Under this principle, commanders are criminally liable if they ignore reports that their subordinates are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"In the Kenyan case, [this] falls on the President of the Republic of Kenya…Mwai Kibaki, his ministers in charge of Internal Security and especially John Michuki who was minister in 2006 when this policy…was put in place, the Commissioner of Police, the Director of Intelligence and the commanders of these extra-judicial execution squads," said Muite.

Muite argued that the fact the killings had occurred on a wide scale over a long period logically showed Michuki and Ali were executing a policy sanctioned or decreed by Kibaki.

He said: "A policy of extermination on this scale could not possibly be formulated without clearance from the Chief Executive, who is the President"

Muite said last month’s killings of civil rights activists Oscar King’ara and Paul Oulu demonstrated impunity and incapacity of local institutions to investigate extra-judicial killings.

He said if he were killed, he would become another statistic unless the ICC acted fast to stem what he described as Kenya’s cascade into misrule.

Contacted for comment, Attorney-General Amos Wako said he had not seen a copy of Muite’s petition to the ICC. "Muite has not sent a copy of the petition to me and, therefore, I can not talk about it," said Wako.