The WanTam Weekly —Truth Without Fear
Kenya’s Gen Z have already paid the price of standing up to William Ruto’s regime. In 2024 and 2025, peaceful youth-led protests were met with bullets, abductions, and police brutality. Lives were lost, blood was spilled, and fundamental rights trampled. The state turned its guns on its own children — a chilling reminder that under Ruto’s watch, human rights violations are not history, but a present reality.
Yet Kenya’s wounds run deeper. The 2007–08 post-election violence (PEV) left over 1,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. That dark chapter not only scarred families and communities, it thrust Kenya into the international spotlight — and ultimately into the hands of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Among those indicted was MP William Ruto, then a rising Rift Valley politician, now the President of Kenya. The charges against him were grave: crimes against humanity, including murder, persecution, and forcible transfer.
Though the case collapsed in 2016, the story of Ruto and the ICC remains a powerful REMINDER of how impunity thrives when truth and justice are silenced.
How Ruto Got Entangled in the ICC Net
In 2010, the ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo named six Kenyans, alias 'Ocampo Six' (Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Francis Muthaura, Hussein Ali and Joshua Sang) as being the most responsible for organizing and fueling the violence. Ruto, alongside radio broadcaster Joshua arap Sang, was accused of leading a network in the Rift Valley that targeted rival ethnic groups after the disputed 2007 election results.
The prosecution alleged meetings at Ruto’s home, mobilization of goons, and the distribution of weapons, mainly arrows and spears. Sang was accused of using his KASS FM platform to incite attacks. Together, they were said to have driven the Kalenjin community into a campaign of violence aimed at securing political power for ODM leader, Raila Odinga.
Why the ICC Case Collapsed
The Ocampo Six trial opened in 2013, but it was riddled with problems from the start:
Witnesses recanted or disappeared.
Families faced threats and intimidation.
Evidence was tampered with, and cases weakened.
In 2016, the judges vacated the charges for Ruto-Sang case. But they were clear: the case collapsed not because Ruto and Sang were found innocent, but because the prosecution couldn’t prove its case beyond reasonable doubt in a climate poisoned by witness interference. The cases against Uhuru and others were withdrawn.
The victims never got justice. Instead, politicians celebrated the collapse as “vindication.”
Here are files and all documents of ICC case against President William Ruto here: ICC, The Hague
The Politics of Impunity
Ruto’s rise after the ICC saga is proof of how power shields the powerful. He went from Deputy President (2013–2022) to President (2022–present), using the ICC narrative as a political weapon — painting himself as a victim of Western meddling and rallying support across ethnic lines.
But the victims of 2007 are still waiting. The displaced still remember. Families of the dead still cry. And Kenya still carries the pain.
Lessons We Must Carry into 2027
1. No leader is worth Kenyan blood.
2. Elections must be decided by ballots, not bullets.
3. Impunity only grows when we forget.
Ruto may have escaped the ICC’s noose, but history cannot be erased. As 2027 approaches, Kenyans must remain alert. The same tactics of fear, intimidation, violence, election theft and ethnic division are on the table.
WanTam is not just about ending Ruto’s one-term presidency, it’s about ending the culture of violence and impunity once and for all.
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