Ocampo Relied on NGO, Press Reports

It is now public that ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo relied extensively on reports of NGOs to make his case before judges in a bid to try six Kenyans over the 2008 violence. Even more frightening is that the prosecutor relied on ''press articles and reports''.

Pre-Trial chamber judge who last week declined to issue summons against the six Kenyans said besides Ocampo failing to convince him that the crimes committed in Kenya meet the threshold of crimes against humanity, the prosecutor also relied so much on reports of NGOs. This is to imply that the prosecutor did not do his own independent investigations.

Judge Hans-Peter Kaul said: ''The prosecutor supported his application, to a large extent, with the same public reports of non-governmental organizations and commissions that he already  submitted on 26 November 2009 when seeking the Chamber's authorization for the commencement of the investigation into the situation in the Republic of Kenya pursuant to article 15 of the Statute''.

In footnotes below, the judge gave the reports that Ocampo relied on as:

Commission of Inquiry into Post Election Violence, "Final Report" ("CIPEV Report"), 16 October 2008, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, "On the Brink of the Precipice: A Human Rights Account of Kenya's Post-2007 Election Violence. (Final Report KNCHR Report"), 15 August 2008, Human Rights Watch, "Ballots to Bullets: Organized Political Violence and Kenya's Crisis of Governance" ("HRW Report") March 2008 and International Crisis Group, "Kenya in Crisis" ("ICG Report"), February 2008

''The (prosecutor's summons) application, relied on only excerpts or a series of sentences, selected by the Prosecutor, from witness statements, reports, press articles and other material,'' Judge Hans-Peter Kaul said in his dissenting vie from two colleagues.

Of course some of the people mentioned adversely in these reports were not called to state their side of the story!

This is besides the fact that the same witnesses used by the NGO reports were the same few that ICC investigators spoke with. In recent months, some have come out to say some witnesses were coached.

With this information in the public, it is so difficult not to see ICC/prosecutor's Kenya case as rubbish!