THE KENYAN prime minister has said he and his government oppose withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, one day after MPs passed a motion calling for the country to leave the Rome Statute that created it.
Speaking to national broadcaster Citizen TV, Raila Odinga said pulling out of the ICC process created to try those suspected of organising 2008’s post-election violence would be pointless. “The government is not pulling out of the ICC process because this will be an exercise in futility,” he said.
“It is said clearly that even if you are to pull out . . . the process takes one year and does not affect cases which are ongoing.”
On Wednesday night, Kenyan lawmakers voted to leave the Rome Statute, one week after ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo named six people suspected as masterminds of violence that killed at least 1,200 people and made 350,000 homeless in early 2008. Three cabinet ministers and a former police chief are among the six.
Decrying the court as colonial and anti-African, energy minister Kiraitu Murungi said Kenya was surrendering its sovereignty by handing over the trial of suspects to a court in the Hague.
“It is only Africans from former colonies who are being tried at the ICC,” said Mr Murungi. “No American or British will be tried at the ICC and we should not willingly allow ourselves to return to colonialism.”
A power-sharing government helped end the violence, after President Mwai Kibaki and the then opposition leader Mr Odinga agreed to try the perpetrators in Kenya or in the Netherlands. No one was brought to account in Kenya, prompting the ICC to investigate the violence themselves.