Uhuru and Ruto Should Have Been Locked Up - Annan

[Simanova]

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May be a day or two before Jubilee politicians start the onslaught on Annan. They are waiting for their cheques first.

The president and vice president were the ones in the dock so they put lots of effort and resources into fighting the caseThe idea that you can apply this kind of procedure while leaders are still in office has been exposed as incredibly difficult because of the huge difficulty of protecting witnesses and preventing the process being politicised."

He further said the Hague-based court got itself on the wrong side of a PR and political campaign in Africa, leading to the collapse of Kenyan cases.

Annan was the chief African Union mediator following the chaos. He oversaw the formation of the grand coalition government with Mwai Kibaki as president and Raila Odinga as Prime Minister.

The Ghanain diplomat told off African leaders criticising the International Criminal Court and dismissed the notion that the court is anti-African.

Annan said the continent's leaders should not pretend they were first [to be charged] and that the process is biased.

http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/06/21/kofi-annan-questions-uhuru-ruto-freedom-during-icc-cases-tells-off_c1372938?platform=hootsuite

[Simanova]

BBC Version

Ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has hit out at Africa leaders for their attitude to the International Criminal Court (ICC), in an interview in the British Financial Times newspaper.

The Ghanaian diplomat rejected accusations that the ICC was an anti-African institution following threats from African countries to withdraw from the court:


Mr Annan said he was sure that Africans wanted their leaders to be held to account:

The president and vice-president were the ones in the dock and so they put lots of effort and resources into fighting the case."

[Simanova]

The ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, terminated the case against President Uhuru Kenyatta because, by her own admission, she did not have sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.

This admission came too late and was accompanied by an intense propaganda effort to prejudice, profile and libel President Kenyatta in the eyes and minds of the global public so as to rob him of his overdue vindication.

This campaign has not relented. We are now seeing desecrable screeds carried by renowned publications, bearing the most incompetent conjecture and ridiculous calumnies.

The New York Times continues its steady descent into the murky, rancid morass of gutter press and has abandoned all pretence of journalistic decency in pursuit of the Prosecutor's agenda.

Relying on the fanciful accounts of unreliable individuals, discarding all attempts at balance and fairness, the Times plies a malicious, vindictive and unprofessional article on the ICC cases.

It is advancing the self-serving and deluded notions of Luis Ocampo, a man whose understanding of the Rome Statute is slippery, and whose appreciation of the legal mandate of the ICC and the Office of the Prosecutor is subordinate to a strong penchant for the extraneous.

Ocampo's delusions are fortified by an appeal to believe the accounts of one of Africa's most vicious, murderous and terrifying organised criminal syndicates against a demonstrably upstanding leader of integrity.

Thus we have New York Times canvassing the exclusive point of view of a menagerie wholly unsuited to the purposes of truth, justice and accountability, and essentially suppressing a credible side vindicated by due process and entirely blameless.

Whom did the paper contact at State House? Why did they not interview Dennis Itumbi, despite making reference to him? Is the truth on PEV going to be dictated by Mungiki, seriously?

The robust canvassing of the Kenyan cases in the media underscores two important points.

First, compared to the decidedly tepid effort in the pre-Trial and Trial Chambers, the OTP has shown extraordinary capability in the media political domain.

At the ASP and in global media, OTP has invested disproportionate time, effort and resources.

This goes to prove our initial thesis that from the beginning, the Kenyan cases were never intended for adjudication in court. Rather, they were part of some externally orchestrated sequence of illegitimate political interventions.

We leave it to the court of world opinion to observe what the ICC is really about.

Unedited

[Georgesoros]

Annan should be barred from Africa. He is a neo-cololinalist. (Sarcasm)

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Annan should be barred from Africa. He is a neo-cololinalist. (Sarcasm)

You are normally a sober mind.  Where is this mindless patriotism coming from? 

You should read Koffi Annan's book, Interventions.  It describes why and how the ICC came to be.  The idea of Responsibility to Protect.  East Timor etc.

If it wasn't for this guy's intervention, Kenya might be a very different story today.  You'd be reading about it, the way you read about Central African Republic, South Sudan.  Who knows, it might even have replaced 1994 Rwanda as a metaphor for what a country should not be.

Oops, I had missed the sacarsm point.