Indicted Sudanese president among guests in attendance as Kenya gets new US-style constitution

Sudan leader attends Kenya constitution ceremony

NAIROBI, Kenya — African leaders including indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir joined tens of thousands of Kenyans Friday as a new constitution was signed into law that institutes an American-style system of checks and balances on power.

This is only the second time that al-Bashir has risked arrest by traveling to a member state of the International Criminal Court since he was first charged in 2009. The ICC has no police force and depends on member states to enforce its orders.

Al-Bashir faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, where U.N. officials estimate 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been displaced. It was not immediately known why Kenyan authorities allowed him to attend.

New York-based Human Rights Watch had urged the Kenyan government to bar al-Bashir from the festivities.

“Whether Kenya allows a suspected war criminal into Kenya is a test of the government’s commitment to a new chapter in ensuring justice for atrocities,” said Elise Keppler, senior counsel in the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. “The Kenyan government should stand with victims, not those accused of horrible crimes, by barring al-Bashir from Kenya or arresting him.”

Kenya’s new constitution is part of a reform package that leaders there committed themselves to after signing a power-sharing deal in February 2008. That deal ended violence that killed more than 1,000 people following Kenya’s disputed December 2007 presidential vote.

President Mwai Kibaki’s official signing into law of the new constitution has been billed as the single most important political event in Kenya’s history since it gained independence from Britain in 1963.

Friday’s event comes after an overwhelming majority of Kenyan voters adopted the new constitution in an Aug. 4 referendum. Kibaki’s signature formally marks the end of a decades-long struggle to cut down the massive powers of the presidency.

The government and parliament now must implement the ambitious document that requires, among other things, the formation of a Supreme Court and a Senate. It also demands that the country’s judiciary be vetted to rid it of corrupt or incompetent judges and that parliament pass 49 new laws.