The fairness of hypocrisy.

Let us see if I will get this right. My house gets broken into. I catch a glimpse of the burglar, but I cannot see him well enough to pick him out of a police identification parade. I report the matter to the police and tell them that I suspect that it is my next door neighbour with the funny accent. The police arrest him and produce him before a judge and charge him with the offence. They investigate further the crime. The collect evidence. My neighbour applies to the court to have the charge-sheet withdrawn on account that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a prosecution. The judges listen to him and withdraw the charge-sheet. I am angry. I apply to the court for the police to publish the evidence they had against my neighbour. They do so. The police and I are sore losers.

I do not care for the certainty that prevailed in the pronounceents of the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights members, the officials of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court or the Representative of the Victims in the Kenya Cases at The Hague regarding the guilt of Uhuru Kenyatta. It is a cardinal principle of law, upheld in all democratic societies, that a man is innocent until a court convicts him of a crime. Whether they will admit it now or some time down the road, Uhuru Kenyatta is innocent of the accusations levelled against him by the Office of the Prosecutor. Therefore, the application by the Victims' Representative to the Trial Chamber V, and the decision of that Chamber, to publish the Prosecutor's evidence regarding its investigation of Mr Kenyatta, is in bad faith and terrible violation of Mr Kenyatta's rights.

No one disputes that offences were committed in 2007 and 2008 and no one disputes that investigations were conducted by not one but three separate institutions before the International Criminal Court got involved: the Waki Commission, the Kriegler Commission and the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights. But despite the allegations made against Mr Kenyatta, at least two judges of the International Criminal Court were persuaded that he should never have been tried at The Hage, and the court eventually agreed with Mr Kenyatta's lawyers that the Office of the Prosecutor acted in haste when it preferred charges against him. The OTP should have completed its investigations before proceeding at all.

The Court was wrong to even entertain the application by the Victim's Representative. If Mr Kenyatta has not been tried or convicted, the evidence collected against him cannot be released unless it is intended to embarass him or foment hatred against him by the Court or the Victims' Representative. One or Mr Kenyatta's persuasive arguments before the court was that he was never given an opportunity to present alternative arguments regarding the allegations made about him before the various investigations into the 2007 and 2008 events. He was not accorded due process. The Prosecutor admits that she relied on the reports of these investigations a great deal while conducting her own investigation. Without Mr Kenyatta's rebuttals, the Prosecutor's as well as the Commissions' investigations amounted to a witch-hunt. With the publishing of this evidence, it apparent that the witch-hunt is not over.

Everyone keeps mouthing off about the rule of law; I have no problem with liars and cheats lip-syncing. But I will be damned if the sanctimonious windbags who do so are just as hypocritical as the liars and the cheats. Sooner or later, a legal process must end. Uhuru Kenyatta's at The Hague ended long before Ms Fatou Bensouda withdrew charges against him; the process came to an end when political expediency prevented the investigations from giving Mr Kenyatta his due when they accused him. They denied him due process. They cannot blame anyone else for the outcome but themselves. All he did was to use the product of their unfair tactics against them. Seems only fair.