President William Ruto yesterday at his media round table said something truly shocking and I don’t know if he understands the ramifications of what he disclosed publicly not just to Kenyans but to the whole world.
“There was a container at the Nairobi area where people were being slaughtered- in a police station- I mean how did we end up there…What kind of rogue an institution was that? That is why I fired that Kinoti man,” said a visibly angry Ruto.
When hard-pressed by journalists, however, to affirm whether he (Kinoti) willfully resigned as he had earlier announced, Ruto downplayed it saying “it is a matter for another day”.
He said it was saddening that more than 200 bodies of innocent Kenyans had continued to be retrieved in rivers and thickets with the cause of their deaths remain unknown.
Those are statements from the president of our country and those are deadly serious things to say.
If true, we do not expect the president to say something like this as some kind of a joke or just to attack those before him because if George Kinoti as DCI chief was murdering 200 people in containers while working for President Uhuru Kenyatta, then both of them have committed very serious crimes against humanity and must be held responsible.
President Uhuru here has to understand that the accusations made by his former deputy, now Kenya’s president, could very well put him at The Hague again.
Suspected criminals of mass murder have to be prosecuted by and in the countries, those crimes are committed. But if they cannot be prosecuted because they have a hold on the state which refuses to prosecute them, then such crimes can be filed at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“It is up to IPOA to tell us how it ended up that Kenyans are killed in this manner and then it was business as usual…30 bodies in Yala, sijui 17 in Garissa, sijui how many bodies elsewhere,” he said. No Mr. President this is not a matter for IPOA.
This is a criminal offense of titanic proportions and you already have the evidence. What is there for IPOA to investigate? Charge the criminals in court using your evidence or Kenyans are calling in the ICC to deal with the matter.
If Kinoti was murdering up to 200 people in the “Death Containers” while working for Uhuru both of them have to be taken to court in Kenya or at the ICC. There is no difference between the alleged Kinoti and Uhuru murders and what happened in that church in Kiambaa in the 2007/8 Post Election Violence. It boils down to reckless massacre of people in both cases.
The only difference is that one crime happened in a church when some really ruthless people set the church on fire with people inside and locked the doors. The other one, according to President Ruto was a sadistic systematic slaughter of people in a container where 200 people were killed. It is frightening to even imagine oneself in any of those situations as the victim.
Ruto’s good comrade and his secret chief of intelligence Dennis Itumbi has further expanded on the “Container of Death” that President Ruto told Kenyans about yesterday.
According to Itumbi the “container of death” was at a police station near State House.
“It was moved from the parking area of the police station near State House and EACC to DCI headquarters,” he tweeted.
Detailing how a boss at the DCI with the support of junior officers tried unsuccessfully to evade questions about the container, Itumbi said a last-minute decision was made to move it from Milimani police station to the DCI headquarters.
At this point, Itumbi stated, Ruto kept asking questions which he said continued to unsettle the would-be quarters.
“A location is identified, phone calls made to juniors in Milimani, and time set. Operation ficha mission accomplished,” he wrote.
Itumbi points out that as Ruto piled pressure on the matter, some of the rogue officers involved started to expose it in a bid to escape.
The container splashed with blood, Itumbi says, has now been “hidden carefully” and paints a horror picture of how victims met their fate after being tortured for days.
So as it is all coming together with evidence readily available for the president himself and his foot soldiers like Itumbi telling Kenyans that President Ruto has been following the issue asking questions and collecting the evidence of these terrible crimes being committed by the DCI chief on behalf of his boss. The president told Kenyans it was on the basis of the mass murders that he fired that Kinoti man.
Well Mr. President, you better know what you are talking about and have the evidence on that because this is not going to be political games for you. If you told Kenyans the truth, this matter is heading to court and the investigation starts with you providing all the information you have.
This is not a private matter between you, Kinoti, and Uhuru. This is a matter of grave national and international concern. Mass murder is not a joke.
Kenyans are going to demand that human rights groups like the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and others including Amnesty International which has a well-established office and network in Kenya get to deal with this very soon.
If President Ruto cooked the whole story up as some form of entertainment for him in a vicious way to malign former President Uhuru Kenyatta and former DCI Chief George Kinoti. It could backfire mightily in Ruto’s face.
You can lie about all those other things that Kenyans heard yesterday but you cannot lie about people committing crimes against humanity in Kenya when you are the president of Kenya. Lies and political games have limits so I would assume the president was not lying on this very grave matter.