By Justice Hub
“The list is real, but hired mouths can say anything.” “How did you get this list? Do you work at the ICC.” “The ICC is a kangaroo court.”
These are just some of the comments posted on the Facebook page of our sister site, The Hague Trials Kenya. They were reacting to an article about an alleged list of ICC witnesses who were killed or are missing in Kenya. Dozens of prosecution witnesses in the case against Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua arap Sang as well as the collapsed case against President Uhuru Kenyatta have either disappeared or been killed. Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has repeatedly expressed alarm at the “attempts to interfere with the witnesses”.
Some of the Facebook followers feel that the blame for the problems with the witnesses lies squarely on the shoulders of the Kenyan authorities.
Others though feel the ICC is to blame for this state of affairs.
Some followers go further and blame the ICC itself for having eliminated the witnesses:
The debate has rekindled another hot issue which has been widely discussed in Kenya: the recanted testimony of a number of witnesses. Last week, the ICC trial judges decided to allow statements of five witnesses who recanted them or failed to testify to be admitted as evidence against Ruto and Sang. That prompted the following comments:
The failure so far to prosecute the main culprits of the post-election violence is deeply upsetting to some of the followers.
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