THE PLOT TO FRAME RUTO PART 1

via (http://www.thejackalnews.com)

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.
PART TWO COMING UP NEXT