Reports Leo Oderab Omolo
The International Criminal Court is reported to have rejected more than 150 witnesses who had been lined up to testify against suspects of the post-election violence of 2007-08 in Kenya.
There revelation came amid reports that ICC team of Situation Analysts and Security are visiting Eldoret town in the North Rift region in their final leg of country wide tours.
The team travelled to Eldoret from Kisumu and is led by Senior Analyst in ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s office, Emeric Rogier.The team arrived in Eldoret last Monday evening before Rogier reportedly flew to Nairobi.
A fellow analyst, Mohammed Kheir, was left to steward the team that first held private talks with security chiefs on Tuesday morning.. The ICC team reportedly met two human right groups and some victims of the post-election violence before touring some of the hotspots, including the Kiambaa Kenya Assembly of God Church where more than 30 people, according to the government records were burnt to death.
The team also visited Langas and Huruma suburbs of Eldoret Town where people were allegedly abducted, killed and bodies buried in trenches. And were later taken to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in the outskirt of the town where most victims of the violence. Dead and injured were taken at the height of the skirmishes.
The ICC team has so far visited Naivasha, Nakuru, Molo, Kericho and Kisumu ending up in Eldoret
And by Tuesday evening news had emerged that the ICC had vetted about 400 witnesses so far, but 150 did not meet the threshold for credibility set by the ICC for their evidence to be accepted.
Some of the witnesses were due to be flown out of Kenya, but have now been dropped. They have been informed that they do not qualify for protection in or outside Kenya. Some of the dropped witnesses had appeared before the Waki Commission which probed the violence in 2008.
“The ICC is very strict on the evidence it wants so the cases at the Hague sail through when hearing begins. That is why some witnesses could not meet the standards, “says a report appearing in the latest edition of the NAIROBISTAR quoting a source within the investigators.
Credible evidence includes recordings but most of those rejected had only verbal hearsay evidence which could not be corroborated elsewhere.
Eleven witnesses have so far been confirmed as having credible evidence and been flown out to an African country but will soon be relocated to Europe in readiness for The Hague trials.
Six are from one parliamentary constituency in Rift Valley and include a next door neighbor of a powerful cabinet minister.
The ICC investigators are still vetting evidence from another 19 witnesses.
Luis Moreno Ocampo was last week quoted saying, that all the possible witnesses needed in the trials at The Hague had been flown out of Kenya. One such rejected witness was suspected of making contracts with a key suspect to cut a deal and gain financially. The man wanted to lure other potential witnesses to accept financial offers instead of going to testify at The Hague.
The intriguing aspect of it is that the key suspect had allegedly made a deal with the rejected witness, a former politician, for him to go out of Kenya and then sweet-talk other witnesses to withdraw their evidence.
The plan was discovered by detectives working for a leading donor agency which is financing the witness protection program before it is fully taken over by the ICC.
TWO weeks ago the same STAR exclusively revealed that one witness who is already under the protection by the ICC outside Kenya had been offered Kshs 50 million through his family in the Rift Valley by a powerful minister to withdraw his evidence, The witness, however, rejected the offer.
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