Nov. 3 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) has denounced that a lawyer in
who awaited the verdict in a witness tampering case before the International Criminal Court (ICC) was found dead at his home in the capital, Nairobi, on September 26, 2022, which is why he has urged to open an investigation to determine the cause of death.
Paul Gicheru, the defendant, had been awaiting a verdict in his trial on alleged charges of witness tampering related to a case against Kenyan President William Ruto, the organization has learned.
For this reason, HRW has called on the Kenyan authorities, with the assistance of the ICC, to investigate Gicheru’s death “quickly, thoroughly and transparently”, after reporting that the initial results of his autopsy did not they were conclusive.
“With the death of Paul Gicheru and the end of the ICC case against him, Kenyans will once again be denied a piece of the truth, this time about efforts to interfere with getting to the bottom of responsibility for the killings. and ethnically motivated reprisals during the 2007 war in Kenya and the 2008 post-election violence,” Elizabeth Evenson, director of international justice for the NGO, said.
“The Kenyan police should investigate his death thoroughly and transparently,” he added.
Claims of witness interference dogged the ICC’s efforts to get to the truth about who was responsible for alleged crimes against humanity during the post-2007 election violence in Kenya.
Gicheru was one of three people wanted by the court on charges of witness tampering. She surrendered to court in November 2020, after pre-trial proceedings, which began in February 2022 and concluded in July 2022. Two other people remain subject to outstanding arrest warrants, according to HRW.
Decisions in the case against Ruto and a co-defendant, in which charges were dropped in 2016, suggested there were “systematic efforts” to corrupt witnesses, including through bribery.
In late 2014, a witness, Meshack Yebei, disappeared and was later found dead after ICC prosecutors named him as an intermediary in the Gicheru case.
