The claims from Queen’s Counsel Courtenay Griffiths in the Daily Telegraph to the effect that the work of the International Criminal Court is hurting Africa is cheap and should not be allowed to go unchallenged.
As an interested party and a Kenyan who was affected by what happened in our country in 2007/2008, I am in a far better position to comment on the case than QC Griffiths who is only doing what he is doing for the dough in it and doesn’t care less even if the same things were to repeat themselves in Kenya in the forthcoming elections.
QC Griffiths is writing from the comfort of the UK or wherever he is, far removed from the realities of Africa or Kenya in particular. If he was writing from any country in Africa or if he was a citizen of an African country, I would listen sympathetically to his cry for justice! But being as he is a non-affected subject, his arguments can only be summed up as the arguments of one who is crying over sour grapes, from the recent sentencing of his client, former president of Liberia Charles Taylor.
QC Griffiths should know that court cases are won on the floor of the court room and not in the public arena of the mass media. It is on the strength of arguments presented before a court of law that a case is won not on the strength of half-baked arguments as he argues on the Kenyan cases before the ICC. I am sure that AC Griffiths understands very well what I am telling him.
Analyzing his argument, one cannot fail to notice that he has fallen into the trap of cheap, bipartisan politics that reigns supreme in some quarters in Kenya in as far as the case involving the four Kenyans at the Hague is concerned.
How does the British funding of the ICC amount to undermining of its credibility and influence in Africa? On which side of the divide is QC Griffiths standing in as far as the crimes that were committed against Kenyans stand? Does he stand with the accused or with the many victims who are yet to be compensated for the heinous crimes that were committed against them by yet to be prosecuted individuals or groups?
His argument that “from Libya to Syria, there are many more victims who still await justice” is hollow and callous to the extreme. Does the fact that there are many victims in other places in Africa or anywhere else in the world, who are yet to face justice, mean that the Kenyan victims are lesser victims and so the Kenyan case should be passed over by the ICC to allow it deal with the other cases?
If this is the kind of argument that QC Griffiths took before the international court in his defense of Charles Taylor, there is no way he could convince any right-thinking, conscientious judge who would want to see justice for all, for the accused and the victims, that Charles Taylor was innocent.
The tired claim that the ICC is only targeting victims in Africa has to be looked at in the context of the judicial processes and history in Africa. Africa is one of the continents in the world where leaders have abused the rights of their people without facing any justice for decades. Now that the ICC has come, the same leaders are turning to leading counsel from Europe, like QC Griffiths, who are paid by funds probably looted from coffers in poor African countries, to defend them.
Furthermore, the same lop-sided arguments fail to mention the fact that the victims, on whose behalf the ICC is prosecuting the cases, are African. For proponents of arguments like QC Griffiths’, it does not matter that we have victims of crimes committed against them in Africa, as long as they (Griffith and company) get their fat cheques from African warlords.
It is we people in Africa who understand what we have gone through. QC Griffiths comes from a system where the rule of law is obeyed and honoured by both the governors and the governed, compared to the situation in many African countries where the reverse is true.
Readers need to ask themselves the question, when QC Griffiths is lamenting about the ICC and its activities in Africa, on whose behalf is he doing that? Is he doing so on behalf of the poor citizens of Africa who cannot afford his services, or is he lamenting on behalf of the moneyed and propertied, who can afford his services?
From his article, it seems that QC Griffiths has ‘already looked at the evidence’ in the Kenyan case and made a conclusion in the following statement, “The case against Uhuru Kenyatta, the deputy prime minister of Kenya, is of serious concern, not only because of the serious lack of evidence against him, but also because of the methods used to obtain this evidence.” Is he a judge to make that kind of judgment? Is it not prudent for him to allow the judges to do their work then make his comments once a judgement is entered? Why is he second-guessing the judges?
As a distinguished member of the legal fraternity, would it not be in order for him to allow the judges to do their work rather than trying to put them in a corner? What does the sub-judice rules say in this case?
The Queen Counsel goes further to claim that the British government favours Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga against Uhuru Kenyatta, one of the accused in the ICC cases in Kenya. He does not advance any good reason other than throwing around the following loose words, “It (Britain) sees its interests as best served through the election of Mr. Odinga in the forthcoming contest, a peculiar position given Odinga’s former support for East Germany and Cuba (his son is named Fidel Castro Odinga).”
I wonder what logic QC Griffiths applies here. Should the fact that Odinga went to school in East Germany make him a pariah in the eyes of the world? Does the fact that he went to school in East Germany make him a supporter of East Germany? And, supporting East German against whom? What a cheap argument? What has the naming of one’s child have to do with the ICC cases? The kind of argument that QC Griffiths advances to support his hypothesis cannot pass test in the minds of right-thinking members of the civilized society.
He goes further to aver that the case against Kenyatta “revolves around a single witness sourced by those close to Mr. Odinga”. Surely, how low can a Queen’s Counsel stoop? His arguments are biased to the extreme, and driven by the desire to get even with the international justice system after losing in the Charles Taylor case.
Listening to his arguments reminds one of the pedestrian arguments that we Kenyans have been accustomed to ever since the ICC cases began. His argument fails to answer the question of how did Kenya get to the ICC.
Did the Kenyan prime minister conspire with the same accused (who used their influence in the Kenyan parliament) to thwart efforts to have a local tribunal deal with the post-election violence cases in Kenya?
His argument has too many loopholes that time and space does not allow me to go into. One more questions to him, the Kenyan case at the ICC has four accused, why is he only speaking on behalf of one of them? Was that the highest bidder for his services?
My advice to those who are in the dock is that they should fight their case in a decent way, rather than try to use the likes of the heartless QC Griffiths, who are wallowing in comfort in the west without caring for the victims of violence and crimes against humanity in Africa!
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