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Eldoret North MP William Ruto/ FILE

Kenya

Ruto’s name will stay in KNCHR report – court

Eldoret North MP William Ruto/ FILE

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 4 – The High Court has declined to expunge the name of Eldoret North William Ruto from the 2008 Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) report dubbed “On The Brink of the Precipice; A Human Rights Account of Kenya’s Post 2007 Election Violence”.

A three-judge bench dismissed Ruto’s case saying he did not deserve the orders he sought.

Justices Mohamed Warsame, Cecily Githua and Weldon Korir said the damage was already done and quashing his name from the report would not help in any way.

The court upheld the KNCHR’s submission that it exercised its statutory mandate in compiling the report and was not actuated by malice nor did it discriminate against Ruto.

The Eldoret North MP who is facing charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) had accused the KNCHR for failing to give him an opportunity to defend himself.

He at one point accused former KNCHR commissioner Hassan Omar Hassan of coaching witnesses to implicate him.

The report is one of the documents that were quoted by the ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo in a case against Ruto at The Hague.

In 2009, Ruto filed the suit seeking to have his name expunged from the report and to clear his name.

As the suit was still pending before three High Court judges, one of the KNCHR sources William Kipkemboi Rono turned against the commission and confessed that he had been induced to make the allegations.

Rono swore an affidavit, saying he was actually the source of the material used by the commission to make the report and that he had even testified before the Justice Philip Waki-led Commission Investigating Post Election Violence.

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He said he and one David Koros assembled most of the witnesses who appeared before the commissions.

He claimed the witnesses were given recommendations on what to record.

Similar attempts had earlier been made by Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta who is also facing charges of crimes against humanity alongside Ruto to quash the part of the report linking him to post-election violence. His application was also rejected by the High Court.

Two High Court Judges, Lady Justice Roselyn Wendoh and Lady Justice Abida-Ali Aroni declined to grant him the orders saying the report was already in the public domain and issuing such an order may not offer sufficient remedy.

However, the judges agreed with Kenyatta’s contention that he was not given a fair hearing by the human rights agency yet he was entitled to be informed about the adverse allegations against him.

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