Ethiopian Review

NAIROBI — Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, cabinet ministers and MPs were among hundreds named Friday by the state-run rights body as alleged perpetrators of Kenya’s post-election violence.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) listed 219 people as suspects behind the violence in which some 1,500 people were killed and around 300,000 displaced following disputes over the December 2007 presidential vote.

Ministers and MPs from both sides of the country’s coalition goverment, security officers as well as the police chief are named in the report entitled: “On the Brink of the Precipice: A Human Rights Account of Kenya’s post-2007 Election Violence”

“After our investigations, these are the suspects we believe played part in organising the post-election violence,” the group’s chairwoman Florence Simbiri-Jaoko told reporters.

Kenyatta, the son of the country’s founding president, and other MPs from central Kenya allegedly “attended meetings to plan for the retaliatory violence by the Kikuyus,” KNCHR said in a report, referring to Kenya’s largest ethnic community.

“They also contributed funds and organised militia for violence,” it added.

Violence erupted after then opposition leader Raila Odinga accused President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, of stealing the elections.

The clashes quickly turned into reprisal tribal killings, mainly in the central, western and Rift Valley regions.

Accusations against other MPs and ministers ranged from planning, incitement and funding while police and administrative officials were accused of ordering excessive use of force.

The rights group’s report came a week after former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, who mediated an end to the unrest, handed the International Criminal Court (ICC) a list of 10 key suspects of the violence.

The list, which has not been made public and is believed to include top government officials, was drawn up by a Kenyan probe into the unrest.

Simbiri-Jaoko said the KNCHR document had been handed to to the government and the panel that probed the post-election violence.

“What we want now is thorough investigations by the ICC, which has the final list so that action can be taken against the perpetrators,” she said. “It is the only way to end impunity in this country.”

She however added that they did not know whether the names they gave out were on the list Annan handed to the ICC prosecutor.

Annan led weeks of mediation that yielded a power-sharing deal in which Kibaki remained as president and Odinga became prime minister.

But efforts to try those behind Kenya’s bloodiest violence since independence in 1963 have foundered over divisions in government on whether to form a local tribunal or to have the suspects tried by the ICC.

In February, parliament failed to pass a bill aimed at establishing a local tribunal, with opponents arguing that the court would be prone to political interference.

- AFP