Edmund Blair and Pascal Fletcher
Kenya is seen as a key ally in the fight against violent Islamist extremism in the Horn of Africa.
By Edmund Blair and Pascal Fletcher
While it hurts Kenya’s tourism and investment, the bloody Nairobi mall assault by Islamist militants will help President Uhuru Kenyatta bolster international support as he confronts charges of crimes against humanity at The Hague.
Accused by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court of fomenting post-election bloodletting in 2007/2008, Kenyatta leads a nation that is now in the spotlight as a victim of crimes punishable under international law.
The raid on Nairobi’s upscale Westgate mall, in which Islamist militants killed dozens of civilians in a hail of gunfire and grenades, has won Kenya words of support and firm condemnations of “terrorism” from leaders around the world.
This could shift the diplomatic scenario for a 51-year-old president, whose election in March as Kenya’s head of state had already added a new dimension to the ICC prosecution against him. He denies encouraging the post-election violence that killed upwards of 1,200 people.
Kenyatta’s allies are arguing that the security implications for Africa and the world of the weekend mall attack claimed by the Islamist militant group Al Shabaab from neighbouring Somalia should take priority over the president’s obligations to the ICC, where he is due to face trial on November 12. Moses Kuria, a strategist for Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition, suggested the ICC suspend its ongoing prosecutions against Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, for two to three years, to allow them to confront a threat to Kenya’s security that the Kenyan leader has called an “international war”.
ICC judges on Monday adjourned Ruto’s trial, which began this month, for a week to allow him to return home and deal with the mall attack crisis. ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdallah said Kenyatta’s defence lawyers had filed a request for the Kenyan president to not physically appear at his trial in the Hague next month, but participate via video link.
All requests for adjustments, suspensions or postponements would be considered by the judges on a “case by case” basis, he said, without commenting further.
Western governments, obliged to walk something of a diplomatic tightrope in their relations with the ICC-indicted pair after their election, now seem willing to work more closely with them, especially in anti-terrorism cooperation.
TACKLING TERRORISM
“I would regard the need to combat terrorism as essential business,” the European Union’s Africa Director Nick Wescott said. He was in Nairobi specifically to discuss with the Kenyan authorities the security implications of the weekend attack, which killed several expatriates as well as Kenyans.
Asked whether this would mean greater Western flexibility towards dealing with Kenyatta, Wescott said the two issues — the Kenyan leader’s ICC trial and his international role in fighting Islamist extremist violence — should be kept separate.
Reflecting this intensified cooperation, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph ole Lenku said the United States, Israel, Britain, Germany, Canada and the police agency Interpol were assisting in the investigation of the Westgate mall incident and the identities of the attackers. But for those who want Kenyatta to face justice and an end to what they call a culture of impunity in Africa, the idea of giving the Kenyan leader any judicial leeway is anathema.
Global risk consultancy Maplecroft said the Shabaab attack on Kenya’s leading shopping mall showed up how the ICC trials against the Kenyan leaders would be “hugely disruptive to the processes of governance” in east Africa’s biggest economy.
Kenyatta, who has up to now publicly pledged his cooperation with the ICC, has made clear that he is actively seeking international backing to confront the widening threat posed by cross-border jihadists like the weekend mall raiders.
In a speech addressing the nation and its “friends” late on Tuesday when he announced that security forces had defeated the attackers after a four-day siege, Kenyatta stressed that “terrorism is a global problem that requires global solutions”.
Since the mall attack, Kenyatta has received calls and messages of support from world leaders, including US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Kenya is seen as a key ally in the fight against violent Islamist extremism in the Horn of Africa and Kenyan troops form part of an internationally-backed African peacekeeping force in Somalia that has put Al Shabaab on the defensive.
In contrast, another ICC indictee, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, who is accused of orchestrating genocide in Darfur and is defying an arrest warrant, is treated as a pariah by the West. Kenya’s government, backed by east African states and some other nations on a continent that is increasingly suspicious of a perceived anti-African bias by the ICC, had already asked the ICC to suspend the hearings scheduled for Kenyatta and Ruto.
African leaders are due to discuss the Kenyan prosecutions at the African Union next month, amid some calls for a walkout by African states from the decade-old ICC.
The Hague court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, who is leading the cases against Kenyatta and Ruto, has given no indication so far that the ICC will ease up on the prosecutions.
REUTERS
Kenya is seen as a key ally in the fight against violent Islamist extremism in the Horn of Africa.
By Edmund Blair and Pascal Fletcher
While it hurts Kenya’s tourism and investment, the bloody Nairobi mall assault by Islamist militants will help President Uhuru Kenyatta bolster international support as he confronts charges of crimes against humanity at The Hague.
Accused by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court of fomenting post-election bloodletting in 2007/2008, Kenyatta leads a nation that is now in the spotlight as a victim of crimes punishable under international law.
The raid on Nairobi’s upscale Westgate mall, in which Islamist militants killed dozens of civilians in a hail of gunfire and grenades, has won Kenya words of support and firm condemnations of “terrorism” from leaders around the world.
This could shift the diplomatic scenario for a 51-year-old president, whose election in March as Kenya’s head of state had already added a new dimension to the ICC prosecution against him. He denies encouraging the post-election violence that killed upwards of 1,200 people.
Kenyatta’s allies are arguing that the security implications for Africa and the world of the weekend mall attack claimed by the Islamist militant group Al Shabaab from neighbouring Somalia should take priority over the president’s obligations to the ICC, where he is due to face trial on November 12. Moses Kuria, a strategist for Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition, suggested the ICC suspend its ongoing prosecutions against Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, for two to three years, to allow them to confront a threat to Kenya’s security that the Kenyan leader has called an “international war”.
ICC judges on Monday adjourned Ruto’s trial, which began this month, for a week to allow him to return home and deal with the mall attack crisis. ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdallah said Kenyatta’s defence lawyers had filed a request for the Kenyan president to not physically appear at his trial in the Hague next month, but participate via video link.
All requests for adjustments, suspensions or postponements would be considered by the judges on a “case by case” basis, he said, without commenting further.
Western governments, obliged to walk something of a diplomatic tightrope in their relations with the ICC-indicted pair after their election, now seem willing to work more closely with them, especially in anti-terrorism cooperation.
TACKLING TERRORISM
“I would regard the need to combat terrorism as essential business,” the European Union’s Africa Director Nick Wescott said. He was in Nairobi specifically to discuss with the Kenyan authorities the security implications of the weekend attack, which killed several expatriates as well as Kenyans.
Asked whether this would mean greater Western flexibility towards dealing with Kenyatta, Wescott said the two issues — the Kenyan leader’s ICC trial and his international role in fighting Islamist extremist violence — should be kept separate.
Reflecting this intensified cooperation, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph ole Lenku said the United States, Israel, Britain, Germany, Canada and the police agency Interpol were assisting in the investigation of the Westgate mall incident and the identities of the attackers. But for those who want Kenyatta to face justice and an end to what they call a culture of impunity in Africa, the idea of giving the Kenyan leader any judicial leeway is anathema.
Global risk consultancy Maplecroft said the Shabaab attack on Kenya’s leading shopping mall showed up how the ICC trials against the Kenyan leaders would be “hugely disruptive to the processes of governance” in east Africa’s biggest economy.
Kenyatta, who has up to now publicly pledged his cooperation with the ICC, has made clear that he is actively seeking international backing to confront the widening threat posed by cross-border jihadists like the weekend mall raiders.
In a speech addressing the nation and its “friends” late on Tuesday when he announced that security forces had defeated the attackers after a four-day siege, Kenyatta stressed that “terrorism is a global problem that requires global solutions”.
Since the mall attack, Kenyatta has received calls and messages of support from world leaders, including US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Kenya is seen as a key ally in the fight against violent Islamist extremism in the Horn of Africa and Kenyan troops form part of an internationally-backed African peacekeeping force in Somalia that has put Al Shabaab on the defensive.
In contrast, another ICC indictee, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, who is accused of orchestrating genocide in Darfur and is defying an arrest warrant, is treated as a pariah by the West. Kenya’s government, backed by east African states and some other nations on a continent that is increasingly suspicious of a perceived anti-African bias by the ICC, had already asked the ICC to suspend the hearings scheduled for Kenyatta and Ruto.
African leaders are due to discuss the Kenyan prosecutions at the African Union next month, amid some calls for a walkout by African states from the decade-old ICC.
The Hague court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, who is leading the cases against Kenyatta and Ruto, has given no indication so far that the ICC will ease up on the prosecutions.
REUTERS
