How Ruto Maintained He Has No Case To Answer In ICC Court

 



Deputy President William Ruto’s defence team on Thursday January 14, 2016 presented its oral submission of his motion of “no case to answer” at the International Criminal Court (ICC) where it maintained that the case facing him had over the years tumbled, and was “in tatters”.
It is for this reason, that Ruto’s lead lawyer Karim Khan told the trial judges that the DP had no case to answer, and that the five-year case deserved to be thrown out of court.
Four things Khan argued before Presiding Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji to demonstrate this were:

1. The Basis Of The Case Had Collapsed

That the basis of the case, stating that Ruto commanded over a “network” that carried out the 2007/2008 atrocities, had collapsed.
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According to The Standard, Khan argued that the “network”, which the prosecution alleges included political, financial, military and media support and is the foundation upon which the case is structured, had toppled.

“The prosecution has no evidence that planning meetings to organise the “network” took place,” The DP’s lawyer argued

Senior Trial Attorney Anton Steynberg on Tuesday January 12 had told the ICC court that planning meetings and creation of a network that was allegedly put up right before the 2007 General Election, with DP Ruto being the head commander, was responsible for killing, expelling and persecuting supporters of Party of National Unity (PNU) and Kikuyus within Rift Valley.
Lawyer Khan wondered in court that if there was existence of this alleged “network” that Judge Osuji termed as carrying out “something that looks like a genocide”, where is it now?

“It makes a good story for an opening speech, but what’s happened to this network? Three-quarters of the alleged financial supporters are no longer part of the evidence that the prosecution is relying on. The military component has completely disappeared and disintegrated. The prosecution is clearly struggling in their bid to maintain a criminal organisation,” Khan was quoted by The Star.

2. ODM Suffered More in Ruto’s Area Than PNU

The lawyer went ahead to table statistics showing that ODM, Ruto’s party in the election in question, suffered more losses in Uasin Gishu than PNU, hence showing how it was not plausible to argue that the DP was responsible for most of the crimes committed in the 2007/2008 post election violence (PEV).
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The prosecution had earlier in the week told the court how the “network” built over meetings held in Ruto’s Sugoi home was responsible for majority of the PEV crimes, as over 50% of PEV deaths were registered in Ruto’s Rift Valley area.

3. Unreliable Witnesses

The third argument Khan used to show that DP Ruto had “no case to answer” was “the withdrawal of prosecution witnesses”, that he said left prosecutors making claims unrelated to their initial assertions.

“The prosecution never called 13 of the witnesses that it had said it would, and those who appeared confessed to having lied. Three have recanted and denied their evidence under oath and one witness failed to come before the court,” Khan said.

READ ALSO: Kenyans Bitter With Withdrawal Of Recanted Evidence

4. Ruto Wasn’t Kalenjin Kingpin And People Did Not Necessarily Listen To His “Orders”

Ruto’s defence team also argued that the prosecution had based its case on a wrong supposition – that Ruto was the Kalenjin “spokesman and kingpin” and that his word was law.

“A spokesman cannot be a king at the same time. Besides, Ruto could not have been king when his supposed subjects, the Kalenjin people, rebelled against him and elected people he did not support,” Khan argued, giving the example of former MPs Musa Sirma and David Koros who were rejected by the Kalenjin, despite having Ruto’s backing.

Ruto’s defence was seeking to highlight that in this regard, the DP was clearly not in any position to command people to do things, much less commit election-related offenses.

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