EDITORIAL:

International Criminal Court: The bitter pill African dictators must swallow

Many sit-tight African heads of state commit heinous crimes like mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing and gross human rights abuse against their own citizens perceived to stand on their way to perpetual rule. The International Criminal Court, ICC, was therefore established to deter such leaders. Thirty four African countries including Cameroon signed the treaty.

With majority of those so far tried African presidents, just because they happen to be more offenders, they are now crying wolf.

The lamentations got to a crescendo following last week’s appearance of Kenya’s serving president, Uhuru Kenyatta at The Hague to defend himself against charges that he was involved in their 2007 post-election violence that led to the dead of over 1000 people.

Lacking some key documents which only the Kenyan government could produce and in the absence of witnesses, the prosecution asked for an indefinite adjournment. In his submission, Prosecutor Benjamin Gumpert expressed regret that:"we have run out of hooks on which we can hang any particular date. The only realistic order is if the court is minded to adjourn is that we don't know when this case will resume. But we believe that justice demands that it should not be terminated now in the light of this obstruction, the only realistic order we can make is to adjourn the case without a date.”

    

Taking advantage of the loophole, Kenyatta’s lawyer, Steven Kay asked for the case to be thrown out. “My client is head of state, but also an accused with rights. His position as head of state is only relevant if there are any allegations of wrongdoing," he argued.

Kay further asked the judges to drop the charges as it was the prosecution's failure to provide witnesses and the supporting documents. “You have the admission of the insufficiency of the evidence in the case...my submission brings us to this position that the case has failed and it has failed in a way that there is no prospect of going further," Kay asserted.

Legal pundits say as president of Kenya, Kenyatta would surely not allow documents that will incriminate him out of the country. The persecution’s submission for an indefinite adjournment may just be to hope that he could be hooked once he quits power.

It is doubtful if Kenyatta would have so confidently appeared at the tribunal if he knew the documents were at The Hague. Being docked, even when he uttered no word, however brought to the front burner the debate for African leaders to back out of the treaty.

Mozambique president, Museveni was the most vitriolic critic of the ICC defending not only the post election violence in Kenya but those in “other African countries”, Cameroon inclusive.

He used the 52^th anniversary of his county’s independence celebration to describe post election killings as “first and foremost, ideological.” He added that: “For the ICC to handle electoral violence as just legal matters is the highest level of shallowness’’. He then urged his African peers to review their membership of the ICC, which he condemned for being biased and an "instrument of post-colonial hegemony".

Museveni said the African Union assembly of heads of state that sat in Addis Ababa last year passed a resolution that was also tabled before the UN Security Council for Africa to pull out but it was ignored. “My view is that at the next summit, African countries should review their membership of the ICC treaty. The ICC is turning out not to be the value-addition product that we had expected it to be," Museveni added.

Former Liberian president, Charles Tarlor who was tricked to resign and later got 50 years at the ICC which he is serving in the United Kingdom was the first high profile African to be convicted. The former Ivorian head of state, Laurent Gbadbo is also on trial at the ICC while the noose is tightening over the head of Sudanese president and his brands who inflict tragedies of human haemorrhage on the governed under the shield of “state security”.

Acerbic critics of ICC want an African court. But for the exponent of such a continental tribunal to make a point, they must show proof that such a court will have the authority to try sit-tight presidents who would not mind cleansing the entire opposition just to glue themselves to power till death do them part.

But do African leaders have that will power to establish such an impartial criminal court?   If the judiciary is not free in many African countries, what is the guarantee that an African Court will have the nerve to try and convict serving heads of state who are known to kill and indiscriminately brutalise even peaceful demonstrators?

Africans may have some iota of evidence to suggest that the ICC looks elsewhere when it concerns other countries out of the continent. Amnesty international has in their reports accused the Israelites of using chemical weapons indiscriminately in their wars with Gaza. On the other hand, Gaza is also blamed by the same human rights defenders for firing rockets at random into Israeli. Would these two parties, just to name a few, not have been pulled to the ICC if they were Africans?

In as much as The Guardian Post is not holding defence for the atrocities of African leaders complaining of the ICC jurisdiction, it must be said that any leader who governs according to the rule of law, democracy, respect for human rights, separation of power and peaceful alternation of power needs not fear the ICC. It is a court of law with its verdicts usually based on incontrovertible proof.

Those who cry foul are leaders who have rotten skeletons in their presidential closets and are prepared to use any means including the barrel of the gun rather than the ballot to rig elections, manipulate legislators to change the constitutions at will, waiting only to die in power.