Nairobi - Kenya's parliament has voted to withdraw the country from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, but the Hague-based tribunal said it would press ahead anyway with the trials of the country's president and his deputy.
President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are accused of orchestrating violence after elections in 2007. About 1 200 people were killed in ethnic blood-letting that plunged east Africa’s biggest economy into crisis.
At the time of the 2007 vote, Kenyatta, from Kenya's biggest Kikuyu ethnic group, was a rival to Ruto, a Kalenjin. After that vote was disputed, machete-wielding members from their groups were blamed for much of the post-election bloodshed.
Kenya is one of the over 120 countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC, a permanent tribunal set up to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
The parliament's decision came ahead of the opening of the trial of Ruto and Joshua Arap Sang at The Hague on Tuesday.
Ruto and Sang are accused of crimes against humanity (murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population and persecution) allegedly committed in Kenya in the context of the 2007-2008 post-election violence.
Both Kenyatta and Ruto had promised to cooperate with the global court before the vote, a position echoed by Ruto's lawyer just before the decision on Thursday. But neither were available for comment on whether that was still their position after the decision was taken.
The parliamentary motion underlined mounting hostility against the court among politicians in Kenya and across Africa, who have accused it of bias as all its suspects to date have been from the continent.
Parliament, dominated by the alliance that brought Kenyatta to power in a peaceful election in March, voted to tell the government to withdraw from the ICC.
"I am setting the stage to redeem the image of the Republic of Kenya," Aden Duale, the majority leader from Kenyatta's Jubilee coalition, said on behalf of the motion.
Opposing him, minority leader Francis Nyenze warned: "We'll be seen as a pariah state. We'll be seen as people who are reactionary and who want to have their way."
Under parliamentary procedure, the government will now introduce a bill to cut ties with the court formally.
The ICC said any departure would take at least a year and it would have no effect on running cases.
ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah said Kenya, by withdrawing from the court, would prevent the court giving "legal protection to the Kenyan population for potential crimes in the future".
Kenya ratified the Rome Statutes in 2005, but Western diplomats have said the cooperation of the Kenyan authorities with the court has often been limited - "wafer thin", according to one senior diplomat in Nairobi.
Analysts say the ICC must do more to address African concerns that it has become a tool for world powers. – NNN-SAnews.gov.za
