Is Kenya Ready to Prosecute its Own War Criminals?

The controversy in Kenya over the International Criminal Court has reached a new high this week. After the outrage of the international community over Kenya’s failure to arrest Bashier last month, recent comments by the Kenyan Justice Minister have sparked a new round of discussion. Last Sunday (Sept. 18th), Mutula Kilonzo , claimed that Kenya’s new constitution gives the country the necessary tools it needs to prosecute the leadership behind the 2007/8 post-election violence. In an interview with the Sunday Nation Mr. Kilonzo claimed that "when these (appointments) are in place, we can say that Kenyan judges meet the best international standards. After that, I can even tell them not to admit the ICC case”.

He continued: “I advocate a local tribunal partly because I’m a Kenyan, and I cannot entertain the idea of a foreign court having to investigate a fellow citizen on offences committed against fellow citizens…My challenge to Kenya is this: You gave yourselves a beautiful gift on August 27. Give yourselves another one by telling the world through the institutions that we created to keep off”.

Regardless of the Justice Minister’s reservations on the need for the ICC, Prsident Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga have both held strong in their support for the investigations. Mr Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, has expressed that “it is [the Courts] hope that the Kenyan justice system will ultimately deal with the many perpetrators that the ICC will not prosecute” but at this time the ICC must carry out its investigation and bring those responsible to justice.

Many others echo the same sentiment that the Kenyan system is just not ready to handle to strain of these prosecutions yet. Mr Hassan Omar, former chairman and current commissioner of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, explained that the ICC can only defer the investigations if the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) is totally convinced that Kenya is capable of handling the trials. He has continued to emphasize that reforms of necessary magnitude to please the PTC will still take a long time and the opportunity to try these criminals will be lost.

So at this time it looks as if Kenya is not yet ready to handle investigations and prosecutions of major war criminals. The ICC will continue with its case and will hopefully gather the unanimous support of Kenya in its journey to bring justice to the country.