Mall massacre may earn Kenyatta ICC leeway
WHILE it hurts Kenya’s tourism and investment, the bloody Nairobi mall assault by Islamist militants will help President Uhuru Kenyatta bolster international support as he confronts charges of crimes against humanity at The Hague.
Accused by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) of fomenting a bloodletting after the 2007-08 elections, Mr Kenyatta leads a nation that is now in the spotlight as a victim of crimes punishable under international law.
Saturday’s raid on Nairobi’s upscale Westgate mall, in which Islamist militants killed dozens of civilians in a hail of gunfire and grenades, has won Kenya words of support and firm condemnations of “terrorism” from leaders around the world.
This could shift the diplomatic scenario for the president, whose election in March as Kenya’s head of state had already added a new dimension to the ICC prosecution against him. Mr Kenyatta denies the charges.
His allies are arguing that the security implications for Africa and the world of the weekend mall attack claimed by the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab from neighbouring Somalia should take priority over the president’s obligations to the ICC, where he is due to face trial on November 12.
“Do you want to focus on the ICC when so much has to be done?” asks Moses Kuria, a strategist for Mr Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition who has worked alongside him.
The ICC, he said, should suspend its prosecution of Mr Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, for two to three years, to allow them to confront a threat to Kenya’s security that Mr Kenyatta calls an “international war”.
“The security concerns of the world at this time would better be served by us focusing all our energies on fighting terrorism, and … ensuring the whole of Africa will not be a safe haven for terrorism,” Mr Kuria said. ICC judges on Monday adjourned for a week Mr Ruto’s trial, which began this month, to allow him to return home to deal with the crisis. ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdallah said Kenyatta’s defence lawyers had filed a request for the Kenyan president to not physically appear at The Hague trial.
Western governments, obliged to walk something of a diplomatic tightrope in their relations with the ICC-indicted pair after their election, now seem willing to work more closely with them, especially in antiterrorism co-operation.
“I would regard the need to combat terrorism as essential business,” the European Union’s Africa director Nick Wescott said. He was in Nairobi to discuss the security implications of the weekend attack, which killed several expatriates as well as Kenyans, with the Kenyan authorities.
Asked whether this would mean greater western flexibility towards dealing with Mr Kenyatta, Mr Wescott said the two issues — the Kenyan leader’s ICC trial and his international role in fighting Islamist extremist violence — should be kept separate.
But he said: “Let’s see how it goes. It is essential we all work as closely together as possible to deal with threats like this in Kenya, in Somalia, everywhere.”
Reflecting this intensified cooperation, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph ole Lenku said the US, Israel, Britain, Germany, Canada and the police agency Interpol were assisting in the investigation of the Westgate mall incident and the identities of the attackers.
But for those who want Mr Kenyatta to face justice and an end to what they call a culture of impunity in Africa, the idea of giving the Kenyan leader any judicial leeway is anathema.
“As tragic as the events at the Westgate mall are, the number of people killed there is a fraction of the people who were killed in the course of the events Mr Kenyatta is accused of orchestrating,” Makau Mutua, a Kenya-born law professor at New York’s State University, said.
He criticised the postponement of the Ruto trial, saying the ICC acted emotionally rather than logically. He saw “short-term sympathy” over the mall attack but “for Kenya, not for Kenyatta”.
Global risk consultancy Maplecroft said the al-Shabaab attack showed up how the ICC trials against the Kenyan leaders would be “hugely disruptive to the processes of governance” in East Africa’s biggest economy.
“As such, the attack will provide another opportunity for Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto to demand that their hearings are switched from The Hague to Arusha in neighbouring Tanzania, or postponed altogether,” Maplecroft said in a briefing note.
Ratings agency Moody’s said the assault would dent Kenya’s growth, particularly by depressing tourism. But assistant vicepresident Edward al-Hussainy said: “We also expect it to give (Mr) Kenyatta’s new Jubilee coalition government an opportunity to galvanise a broader mandate and dull the international and domestic political effect of the ongoing ICC trial.…”
Mr Kenyatta, who has up to now publicly pledged his co-operation with the ICC, has made clear he is actively seeking international backing to confront the widening threat posed by crossborder jihadists such as the mall raiders.
In a speech addressing the nation and its “friends” late on Tuesday when he announced that security forces had defeated the attackers after a four-day siege, Mr Kenyatta stressed that “terrorism is a global problem that requires global solutions”.
“Kenya will stand with our friends in tackling terrorism and I ask our friends to stand with us,” he said. Since the mall attack, he has received messages of support from world leaders including US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Kenya is seen as a key ally in the fight against Islamist extremism in the Horn of Africa. His government, backed by East African states and other nations on a continent that is increasingly suspicious of a perceived antiAfrican bias by the ICC, had already asked the ICC to suspend the hearings. The Hague court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, has given no indication the ICC will ease up on the prosecutions.