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Matsanga tells Bensouda to drop Kenyan cases

Bensouda has written to the trial chamber handling President Kenyatta’s case, asking the judges for an adjournment from the February 5 scheduled trial date/FILE

Bensouda has written to the trial chamber handling President Kenyatta’s case, asking the judges for an adjournment from the February 5 scheduled trial date/FILE

NAIROBI, Kenya Dec 20 – David Matsanga, the Uganda peace negotiator who has consistently remained steadfast, often urging ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to drop the Kenyan cases because they lack the required threshold to sustain a trial walks tall today.

He is proud because Bensouda has finally threw in the towel, admitting Thursday that she has no sufficient evidence to try President Uhuru Kenyatta whom she had accused of orchestrating the 2007-8 violence in Kenya.

“I feel more saddened that it has taken five years for the OTP to know that the evidence in both Kenyan cases was flawed,” Matsanga said in a statement Friday, opening a new war front with the prosecutor whom he told to now drop the cases altogether.

“I must hasten to add that an adjournment for me is not my final resting point as I want all cases collapsed because of flawed and cooked evidence.”

Bensouda has written to the Trial Chamber handling President Kenyatta’s case, asking the judges for an adjournment from the February 5 scheduled trial date.

In her request to the judges, Bensouda explained that with the dropping of two of her key witnesses, she is not comfortable proceeding with the President’s case to trial.

“Having carefully considered my evidence and the impact of the two withdrawals, I have come to the conclusion that currently the case against Mr Kenyatta does not satisfy the high evidentiary standards required at trial,” she said in her Thursday statement.

“I therefore need time to complete efforts to obtain additional evidence and to consider whether such evidence will enable my office to fully meet the evidentiary threshold required at trial,” she added.

Matsanga has two cases pending at the ICC, in the first case – he is seeking to clear his name on allegations of tampering with a witness and the second one he has accused the prosecutor of perjury, obstruction of justice and perversion of justice.

The cases are all pending before the Appeals Chamber and were filed on October 14 2013 and November 6 2013 respectively.

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“The Chief Prosecutor has no alternative but stick to the guidelines of the Rome Statute given the false evidence and the lack of evidentiary threshold in case 2,” Matsanga who is also the chairman of Africa World Media said.

Matsanga wonders why the prosecutor did not consider taking the decision she made on Thursday long time ago, “when it became apparent her evidence was flawed.”

“These are issues I raised from the time her predecessor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was investigating the cases, but they ignored me,” he said.

“This should have been done long time ago if it had not been for the politics of international conflict merchants—the NGOs,” he said.

Matsanga insists that the OTP has committed what he termed ‘serious crimes’ which must be punished.

“It must go on record that serious crimes were committed by the OTP under Article 70 especially by the former chief prosecutor during his investigations in the Kenyan situation,” he said.

He insists that both cases facing President Kenyatta, his deputy William Ruto and journalist Joshua arap Sang are contaminated and cannot stand the test of time.

“The ICC procured witnesses who should not be paraded in an international court for the sake of Kenyan peace and unity,” he said.

He has called for the termination of “all the Kenyan cases”.

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“Dropping all the [Kenyan] cases will keep the face of ICC beaming in Africa,” he said.

Matsanga insists that for the Kenyan victims of post election violence to get justice, proper investigation must be conducted.

“Victims of the post election violence must be given a transparent verdict not a faked verdict that could create more conflict in Kenya,” he said.

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