Attorney-General nominee Dorcas Oduor has defended her decision not to prosecute suspects of the 2007/08 post-election violence.
Suna East MP Junet Mohammed had asked Oduor to explain why she did not prosecute them.
“You are on record saying that there was no evidence to charge certain people suspected to be behind post-election violence. What made you make that decision? Can you explain it to the committee as a distinguished prosecutor?” he said.
Speaking on Friday when the National Assembly’s Committee on Appointments was vetting her for the position, Oduor said she needed sufficient evidence to charge the suspects.
“I chaired a task force to look at offences that were committed. The task force concluded a report that was presented to the President and different arms of government,” she noted.
Oduor further pointed out that she chaired the task force as a prosecutor.
“I was expected to look at the evidence with the lenses of a prosecutor which requires me to be sure that before I can recommend prosecution, I have sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest and I have a reasonable prospect of conviction,” she explained.
“I used the law as it was, applied it to the circumstances and I did my contribution to the task force and whatever was presented to the President was a result of the task force."
The prosecution in 2012 concluded that many of the more than 4,000 investigations the police pursued in connection with election-related violence could not go to court for lack of sufficient evidence.
Oduor, then Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, said many of the cases did not have witnesses, statements from victims were taken a year after the crimes were committed, or no DNA evidence was collected.
Oduor said many witness statements were also vague, making it difficult to build a case for court.
She noted that she had reviewed 4,300 investigation files out of a total of 4,700.
The police opened the files while investigating the violence that followed Kenya’s botched December 2007 presidential election.