I came to meet the honourable
William Ruto, the Kenyan MP and (at the time) candidate for president, when he
was chosen to be guest of honour at the launch of “Unyielding Hope:the Life and
Times of Koitaleel Somoei”, a biography of the freedom fighter who led the
resistance to the British invasion of Kenya which I had co-authored with a
descendant of the subject. The only thing I knew about Ruto at the time was
that he was indicted for crimes against humanity at the Hague. My Kenyan
friends made haste to assure me that not only was he innocent but that he was
the best person to launch the book, being the de facto leader of the Kalenjin
ethnic group to which Koitaleel had belonged. However I could not be easy in my
mind without determining for myself whether William Ruto was guilty of the
terrible crimes of which he stood accused.
The accusations against him are
that he helped to organise the violence that followed in the wake of the
disputed result of the 2007 elections directed at the supporters of the allegedly
victorious President Kibaki. This violence was racially charged with Kalenjin
gangs attacking Kikuyus in the Rift valley. The worst incident, which shocked
the conscience of the world, saw a church full of Kibaki supporters burned to
death. There were also revenge atrocities committed by Government supporters.
The Waki commission, established to investigate these troubles, named certain
individuals whom it believed had organised or assisted the commission of crimes
against humanity. These names were kept secret from the Kenyan public instead
being passed on to Kofi Annan who passed them to the International Criminal
Court. Six Kenyans were indicted by the Hague, though two of the cases (against
Henry Kosgey and Mohammed Hussein Ali), were dropped leaving two (Ruto and Joseph Sang) charged in
connection with the original violence, and two others (rival presidential
candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and former civil service chief Francis Muthaura) for
the counterviolence.
Ruto's alleged role in these
troubles was as an organiser and financer. I asked my co author Kipchoge Araap
Chomu, Executive Director of the Koitaleel Somoei foundation and our mutual
friend the businessman Mike Cositany how they could be so confident that Ruto
was not guilty. They replied that he couldn't have organised the violence for
the simple reason that the violence wasn't organised. As soon as Kibaki's
alleged victory was announced the supporters of his opponent, Raila Odinga
erupted into violence. This outcome was a reprise of the aftermath of the 1992
and 1997 elections which were also followed by violent outbursts.
After researching the matter I
have decided that my friends were only partially right. I think there were ODM
politicians who poured petrol on the flames once the violence had started and
likely some who planned beforehand to cause havoc in the event of a stolen
election. The question to be answered is whether Ruto was one of the guilty
parties.
Some of the charges originally
made against Ruto may not in the event be preferred at the ICC due to having
been disproven in advance. For example that he was in one place handing out
guns when he was captured by the Kenyan media in quite another. Other charges
are a priori wildly implausible to anyone with a little local knowledge. Thus the
Waki Commission entertained the notion that Kalenjin leaders in the Rift valley
had organised a mass oathing ceremony in which the young men receiving
circumcision swore to make war upon the Kikuyu. It has been claimed that 25
oxen supplied by William Ruto were sacrificed to seal the oath along with 25
dogs.
A minor problem with this
narrative is that the Kalenjin have never sacrificed dogs. This was confirmed
to me by the renowned authority on Kalenjin history and culture Dr Kipkoeech
araap Sambu.The nearest historical paralell that he could came up with was the
cutting in two of a dog to seal a peace treaty, a ceremony which did not take
the form of a sacrifice. A weightier problem, pointed out by my friends, is
that it would have been impossible to keep a conspiracy on this scale a secret.
As Kalenjin community leaders they would have had to have known. So if the Waki
commission is right my friends are lying to me when they say there was no
conspiracy by the Kalenjin community against the other peoples of Kenya. My
friends did not claim that there were no atrocities committed with
premeditation and they believed the counter violence showed the hallmarks of
organisation. Rather it was that they insisted that the original explosion of
violence in 2007 was just that, an explosion which Ruto could not possibly have
controlled.
Believers in the Kalenjin
conspiracy may say that, after all, it did not remain a secret. A handful of
brave witnesses have blown the whistle and are due to testify at the Hague. So
what about these witnesses? Kipchoge told me that he knew two of the witnesses,
one of them against Henry Kosgey (whose case was eventually dismissed), another
against Ruto. He had asked the witnesses why they were lying and was told they
had been offered money, safe houses and relocation to a country of their choice
for asylum. They said the opportunity was too good to miss.”I need to eat” said
one. When I asked Kipchoge who was responsible for bribing the witnesses he
surprised me by claiming NGOs were responsible. However when I looked into it I
found that some of the original witnesses against Ruto had recanted, claiming
they had been bribed by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) a
supposedly autonomous Government body. My friend's arguments persuaded me of
Ruto's likely innocence and I appeared with him at the book launch. However
NGOs made for unlikely villains and I
felt compelled to dig deeper.
I went on to speak to one of the
original witnesses against Ruto, whom I shall call X, as he is not yet willing
to be named. X told me that during the post election violence he had witnessed
atrocities against Kikuyu and had given evidence to the Waki commission about
the actual perpetrators who, he says, remain free to this day. Prior to giving
evidence he met the then justice minister and current presidential candidate,
Martha Karua, who called a lawyer Njenga Mwagi who persuaded X to introduce a
rumour about Ruto in the last paragraph of his statement.
X was first asked to improve his
story by Ken Wafula founder of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy and
subsequently chairman of Kenya's National Council for NGOs. He said that Omar
Hassan of the Kenya National Commission
on Human Rights and Martha Karua also pressured him to further incriminate
Ruto. In return for implicating Ruto he was housed in luxury accomodation, paid
60,000 Kenyan shillings a month from the KNCHR plus 45,000 a month from US Aid
Kenya and promised relocation abroad.
The claim that Wafula and Hassan
had bribed witnesses is one that has been aired before. Ken Wafula,
responding to the claims in the Daily
Nation, admitted that witnesses had been housed in apartments costing 120,000
shillings a month and had been paid 60,000 a month “subsistence”. He said other
groups were paying the same individuals 70,000 a month. To put this in
perspective 60,000 Kenyan shillings is arond £450, an amount which could be
described as a subsistence allowance in the UK. In Kenya however, where the
majority of the population live on a dollar or two a day per family member it
is a handsome sum. Xs allowance came to around £800. According to Wafula's own
testimony others were receiving £1000 a month. The monthly rental allowance for
witnesses also works at around £1000.
X told me that the witnesses who
received these allowances were poor people, many of them unemployed and that
the money was dependent on their accusing William Ruto. He said that he and the
other witnesses against Ruto had met together to concoct their testimony. I did
not know what weight to place on X's testimony, I thought he was telling the
truth but logically he had either lied in the past or was lying now.
I managed to make contact with
John Busii the chairman of the regulatory committee for Kenya's National
Council of NGOs. If anyone was in a position to tell me what was going on he
was, I reasoned.
Read part 2 of "The Framing
of William Samoei Ruto" - "John Busii's Evidence"
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