Deputy President Ruto shakes hands with former police commissioner Hussein Ali in The Hague on Friday. Photo/DPPS
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 20 – Former Police Commissioner Mohammed Hussein Ali has travelled to The Hague in a show of support for Deputy President William Ruto and Journalist Joshua arap Sang.
Ali, whose charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) were dropped at the pre-trial stage is well acquainted with the Dutch city and the demands the criminal process makes of the suspects.
When his charges were dropped in January 2012, the former police boss said he was sure that ICC would acquit those who had been indicted – Uhuru Kenyatta, Francis Muthaura, Ruto and Sang.
The Prosecutor later dropped charges against Muthaura before the trial began.
“I am confident that going forward, justice will have been done on the basis of evidence and facts and that is what all Kenyans, including myself crave for,” Ali had said in January last year.
Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed this week mentioned the drooping of charges against Ali, Muthaura and Henry Kosgey when she said the evidentiary deficiencies should also apply to President Kenyatta, his deputy and Sang’s cases.
“The pot of evidence than has been used in the Kenyan cases is the same for the six suspects who were there initially and there has not been any addition so if three of the six were acquitted on basis of not enough implicating evidence then the other three also need to be acquitted,” she told the BBC on Wednesday.
And while Ali’s empathy with the remaining three suspects may not be in question, it is unclear whether he will testify on either of their behalf.
Ali together with President Kenyatta and the former civil service head Muthaura had been charged together in Kenya Case 2 for co-ordinating retaliatory attacks against the Kalenjin and in defence of the Kikuyu who were being forced out of the Rift Valley in droves following the 2008 General Election.
ICC Pre-trial chamber II was however unable to confirm the charges against Ali citing insufficient evidence to prove that he gave his officers a shoot-to-kill order.
The same applied for former Cabinet Minister Kosgey for whom they said there weren’t sufficient witnesses to corroborate the prosecution’s contention that he conspired with Ruto and Sang to evict the Kikuyu from the Rift Valley.
And although the pre-trial chamber confirmed the crimes against humanity charges against Muthaura, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was forced to drop the charges against him due to her witnesses’ hesitance to testify against him.
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