Africa-Press – Kenya. Defence CS Aden Duale has revealed for the first time how former Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu belted out of the ICC in November 2015 during the Assembly of State Parties in the case against then Deputy President William Ruto.
In his book For The Record, Duale painted a picture of a scared Waititu, then the Kabete MP, who ran back to Kenya on the false assumption that he was wanted by the International Criminal Court as one of the key suspects in Kenya’s 2007-08 post-poll chaos.
Duale said civil society groups had printed t-shirts, flyers, leaflets and posters bearing pictures of Kenyan politicians to paint them as faces of impunity in the country for the international community to see.
“We would pick up all the leaflets and dump them in the garbage bins in the hotel room, but every morning they would come back with more,” Duale said.
“For two days, nothing happened. Delegates were frustrated,” he added.
Duale said he had flown in from the UK where he was on an official trip for a parliamentary assignment to attend Ruto’s Assembly of State Parties.
On arrival, he met a bevvy of Kenyan politicians who had also shown up at The Hague in solidarity with Ruto.
Waititu was among the team within the court precincts waiting patiently for the start of proceedings.
“Meanwhile, the civil society activists did not relent in their personalised campaigns against the politicians,” Duale narrates in his book.
“They printed posters with pictures of politicians next to images of blood spatters. When Ferdinand Waititu, then Kabete MP, saw the images, he thought they were from the ICC. He took off,” Duale said.
The Defence CS said together with the then Thika Town MP Alice Nga’ng’a, they spent hours scouring the court and his hotel for signs of the former governor to no avail.
Waititu was not in the hotel but his luggage was still there, Duale said.
“We were alarmed. Thirty hours later, he called from Nairobi, saying he saw his picture at the ICC with the message that he was an accused person and took the next available flight to Kenya. We laughed a lot about it,” Duale said.
In spilling more beans about the goings on at the court, Duale, who was then the Majority Leader in the National Assembly said more drama unfolded at the court.
“I recall one afternoon, the Ugandan gadfly David Matsanga, who was at the ICC claiming to be an investigative journalist, confronted the civil society activists and it almost got nasty, but the ICC orderlies intervened,” he said.
Matsanga had shot to the limelight in the wake of the ICC cases when in 2013, he sensationally claimed that retired President Uhuru Kenyatta and Ruto would be detained should they answer the ICC summons.
He claimed the ICC had put in place mechanisms that would see the duo detained in The Hague when their criminal cases start. It never was.
Ruto’s trial at the Hague opened on September 10, 2013, and trudged on until April 6, 2016, when all charges against him and former Radio journalist Joshua Sang were dropped.
Their freedom came slightly over a year after charges against Uhuru were dropped by the court on December 3, 2015.
“All the diplomatic efforts had borne fruit. The URP wing exhaled. Uhuru breathed a sigh of relief. They could now focus on their re-election,” Duale said.
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