Kenya attorney general disowns bid to drop Kenyatta trial
NAIROBI (AFP) - Kenya's attorney general on Saturday distanced himself from a move by the country's ambassador to the United Nations seeking to drop an international trial for crimes against humanity for President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy.
Githu Muigai, the government's top legal advisor, said he had not been aware of the confidential letter from the envoy to the UN Security Council made public Thursday.
"The official position of the Kenyan government is that it has cooperated fully with the ICC and intends to continue cooperating within the framework of the Rome Statute and international law," he told Capital FM radio.
He said the government hoped that the cases would be dealt with quickly.
Kenyatta elected in March, and Vice President William Ruto are due to go on trial later this year for crimes against humanity relating to deadly post-election violence in 2007-08.
Ruto himself has also sought to distance himself from the letter by Kenya's ambassador to the United Nations, Macharia Kamau, seeking the termination of the trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
"(Ruto) would like to dissociate himself with the application... as it does not represent his desire. He was never consulted in the making of the application and not in the presentation," his lawyer Karim Khan said Friday.
While the UN Security Council can ask for a case to be deferred for a year, it does not have the authority to order that the ICC drop a case completely, and diplomats at the United Nations said Kenya's demand was likely to be swiftly rejected.
Some 1,100 people died in bloodshed after the 2007 elections marred by allegations of vote-rigging, shattering Kenya's image as a beacon of regional stability.
What began as political riots quickly turned into ethnic killings and reprisal attacks, plunging Kenya into its worst wave of violence since independence in 1963.