President Yoweri Museveni says he will stop his cooperation with the International Criminal Court.
In a strongly worded speech at celebrations to mark Kenya’s 51st Independence Day in Nairobi, Kenya, President Museveni is quoted as saying: “Am done with them. I am done with the ICC.”
“People of the West should live their foolishness. Am done with the ICC,” the President added at a parked Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi.
President Museveni also wondered why the ICC had continued to try Kenyan leaders since the African Union had agreed to “set aside criminal cases against President Uhuru Kenyatta and vice president William Ruto”.
The two together with journalist Joshua Arap Sang had been accused by the ICC of crimes against humanity following contested election results in the 2007 polls.
However, the ICC last week dropped charges against President Kenyatta, saying they had failed to gather enough evidence to try him.
At the same function Ruto said President Kenyatta was an innocent man who had been wrongly implicated by the ICC.
“The President’s case collapsed because our president is an innocent man,” he said.
It is not the first time President Museveni has disparaged the ICC, which he says has fallen prey to Western influences and has become an extension of colonialism.
Last year, during President Kenyatta’s swearing – in ceremony in Nairobi, Mr Museveni congratulated Kenyans for having rejected Western colonial tendencies, saying Kenya was an independent sovereignty, whose people where free to elect the leaders they desired.
The court has since its inception convicted only two persons – Thomas Lubanga Dyilo and Germain Katanga of DR Congo, who are serving a 14 and 21-year jail terms respectively.
Other key leaders, who have been indicted by the ICC include: Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Muammar Gaddafi, former Libyan leader, who died in 2011 and Laurent Gbagbo, former Ivorian President.
