Annan: Kenya postelection violence tribunal needed

NAIROBI, Kenya — Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who mediated an end to Kenya’s postelection violence, said Wednesday that the country should form a local tribunal to try the suspected perpetrators.

He said that both a Kenyan court and the International Criminal Court are needed.

Annan said the ICC is likely to try only a handful of the key perpetrators but a local tribunal would be able to try others.

Without a local tribunal, “quite a lot of people who have committed crimes are going to get away,” Annan said.

His comments, however, appear to contradict a joint statement made earlier this week by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga after their first meeting with him, in which they advocated only the ICC.

Debate has persisted in Kenya on how and where to try the key perpetrators of the violence that saw more than 1,000 people killed following the disputed December 2007 presidential election.

There is a bill before parliament, which is currently on recess, that proposes setting up a tribunal similar to those trying war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and insulating it from political manipulation.

In October last year, an independent commission that investigated the violence recommended the government form an independent tribunal with Kenyan and foreign judges to try the suspects, arguing that Kenyan courts are not credible. It recommended the ICC take over the cases if that process failed.

Both recommendations won wide local and international support as credible mechanisms for tackling the violence, which was the worst since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963.

Annan told journalists that he has always thought Kenya needed several mechanisms to deal with the violence and not just one approach.

“It is not either the local tribunal or the International Criminal Court. It is both,” he said.

When the government tried to push through a bill to form a tribunal earlier this year, lawmakers voted against it saying it did not have enough safeguards to protect it from political manipulation by powerful individuals suspected to be involved in the violence. Critics counter they feared being investigated.

Several human rights bodies and the independent commission that investigated the violence point to businessmen and politicians in the current administration as the key perpetrators of the violence.

This week Annan has held meetings with Kibaki and Odinga as well as diplomats, activists and others. He returned to Kenya on Sunday for the first time in a year to review progress on a reform agenda agreed as part of the peace deal.

He said he would have liked the government to have moved faster on reforms, but progress has been made.

“I leave Kenya with the feeling that there is a renewed sense of urgency and seriousness around the reform program,” Annan said.

Annan had mediated a power-sharing deal that Kibaki and Odinga signed in February 2008 to end postelection violence, which was also fueled by frustration over poverty and corruption.