By MIKE CORDER
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor dropped all crimes against humanity charges against Kenya’s president on Friday, highlighting the court’s problems in bringing to justice the high-ranking officials it has accused of atrocities.
Prosecution office spokeswoman Florence Olara told The Associated Press that prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had filed a notice withdrawing the charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Kenyatta had been charged with murder, rape, persecution, deportation and other inhumane acts as an “indirect co-perpetrator” in violence that flared after Kenya’s 2007 elections and left more than 1,000 people dead.
The collapse of the case is a new blow to the credibility of the court’s prosecution office. The office has launched nine full investigations since its establishment in 2002 — all of them in Africa — and has just seven suspects in custody.
Kenyatta’s British lawyer, Steven Kay, said in an email to the AP that the court and its prosecutors, “owe (Kenyatta) an apology for bringing proceedings based upon false witnesses and impugning his integrity in such circumstances.”
Kenyatta’s trial was postponed twice this year while prosecutors attempted to shore up their case after a key prosecution witness refused to testify and another admitted giving false evidence. Earlier this week, judges gave prosecutors a week to announce if their case was strong enough or to drop the charges.
Kenyatta was indicted in 2011 but went on to become the president of Kenya in the 2013 election, using his indictment at the Hague-based court as a rallying issue. His government lobbied hard to have the case against him deferred by the U.N. Security Council, arguing that the delay was essential because Kenya needed its leader to help fight al-Shabab terrorists in neighboring Somalia and at home.
The collapse of the case against Kenyatta underscores some of the limitations of the international court, which has no police force and must rely on help from governments that may only wish to cooperate when it suits their political purposes.
The court’s mission is to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities when a country is unwilling or unable to prosecute them itself.
