BY HARRIET MUGO
Fifteen years later, and after the retirement of President Uhuru Kenyatta, former Mungiki leader Ndura Waruinge has emerged with sensational claims about the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Waruingi says ICC offered him Ksh40 million to implicate former President Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2007/08 post-election violence case.
Waruinge alleged that former Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo had approached him to sign a doctored confession implicating Uhuru.
He explained that his signature on the letter would have given the prosecution a strong case against the retired president.
“I was not an ICC witness but the ICC prosecutor Ocampo came to me in 2014 and requested me to sign a letter that had some sort of written evidence explaining how Uhuru Kenyatta paid me to go and kill.
He was accompanied by two well-known Kenyan politicians and told me that they would pay me Ksh40 million as long as I appended my signature,” Waruinge recounted
However, the former sect leader turned down the money offer and hatched a plan to inform Uhuru, who was at the time the Deputy Prime Minister, about what was happening.
“I told them that I would like to consult with my wife on the matter after which I would get back to them. I immediately called Uhuru and told him that they wanted to fix him. Uhuru asked me to go to a hotel in Kampala where I met his lawyer, Karim Khan, and wrote statements in favor of Uhuru,” Waruinge claimed.
Following the new development, the new ICC prosecutor who took over the case from Ocampo, Fatou Bensouda, told the court that there were attempts to tamper with the witnesses.
On March 2015, Trial Chamber V (B) terminated the proceedings in the case against President Kenyatta and vacated the summons to appear against him following a withdrawal of charges by the prosecution.
The prosecution decried political interference and massive interference with witnesses it had brought before the court. Uhuru had been charged with committing crimes against humanity.
On October 14, the ICC Trial Chamber III terminated proceedings against former lawyer Paul Gicheru following his death.
According to the ICC legal framework, the Court’s jurisdiction cannot be exercised over a deceased person.
