OPEN LETTER TO MORENO OCAMPO

By The Ghanaian Newspaper « The INSIGHT »N°1293, Friday 21st October 2011 (page 1&11)

Dear Mr. Moreno Ocampo, you have arrived in Côte d’Ivoire, sent by the Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ostensibly to investigate war crimes and human right abuses in the wake of violence that followed the disputed elections in this nation. The ICC has now been known to be a court that sits in judgment against the defeated side in a war, especially if that defeated side is considered as enemy by certain powerful countries in this world .In the history of the ICC ,I have never known you or your employers to investigate war crimes, human right abuses and atrocities committed by those whose activities are approved by the western countries.
For example, although atrocities and human right abuses are currently taking place in Yemen and Bahrain, you have not been interested in those.

In spite of overwhelming evidence that troops of the United States committed atrocious crimes in the way they murdered innocent people in Iraq, you and the ICC never showed any interest. Although you have heard of the killing of African immigrants in Libya by forces associated with the Transitional national government (TNC), you have turned a blind eye to these events.
Perhaps you have not been taking account of your pattern of work. If you had, you would have noticed that your targets have most invariably been about cases in Africa. You chased Charles Taylor (Liberia).
Although you claim that in your immediate work in Cote d’Ivoire, you would be impartial; your disposition so far does not give confidence that you would be unbiased. For example, you have stated that between three and six people would be “investigated” for war crimes. My dear Ocampo, how did you arrive at that figure of a maximum six? Is it that there are a particular six persons on whom you have set your sights for your hatched job? Otherwise, why do you come to a conclusion that it is six people that you are going to “investigate?”
You must kwon that no one ever witnessed Alassane Ouattara physically killing people. In much the same vein, no one saw Gbagbo with a Kalashnikov or machete in the streets mowing down people. We are therefore left with the option of leaders who were in command of their factions, some of whom committed murder against fellow citizens. If therefore you are to trace acts committed by Ivorian soldiers and militia to Gbagbo and hold him accountable, you should equally be interested in holding Ouattara and Guillaume Soro responsible for atrocities committed by the Forces Nouvelles who were under the command of these two people.
If you were interested in keeping your eyes open while you comb the country, you would realize that it is not the regular police forces who man the police stations. It is the”dozos” and the Forces Nouvelles of Ouattara and Guillaume Soro who occupy the police stations and regularly mount sorties of midnight murders on suspected supporters of Gbagbo.
I also realize that, since your arrival in Cote d’Ivoire, you have held very friendly meetings with Ouattara and Soro, with at least two of the people, whose forces are known to have committed grave mass murders in Duekoué, Blolequin,Toulepleu, Doke, Guiglo and in several other towns and villages throughout Cote d’Ivoire. If your hosts, Alassane Ouattara and Soro are not to be prosecuted, then who should be? Or you are not interested in the atrocities that forces under these two people committed and are still committing? Or is it that, in your book, it is only the defeated that are guilty? Is that the “justice” that you seek for this world?
Mr. Ocampo, you may recall that sometime in the course of the Ivorian conflict, you raised your tail and threatened prosecution immediately following reports in the western media that forces loyal to Gbagbo had “massacred” a group of women who were demonstrating in Abobo , suburb of Abidjan in support of Ouattara. I hope you would go to Abobo to investigate their case and build your “solid” case against Gbagbo. When you go to Abobo, and if you were in any way interested in an “impartial” investigation, you would find that all those women who pretended to be dead from Gbagbo gunshots in that event, are all alive today. I have a copy of video footage which I obtained from a pro-Ouattara website and which was entitled “Massacre of innocent women by Laurent Gbagbo”. This was the so-called “evidence” which got your tails up in March this year when you threatened Gbagbo that you would come to investigate him. Please look carefully at the following pictures, which are printed in sequence:
The footage shows that the “dead” Ouattara women tried to get up at some point, wrongly thinking that the video recording was completed. However, a man beside her shouted, “Attend!” (meaning, “Wait!”). She then quickly went down again and pretended to be dead.
When you believed this cock-and-bull video, I felt sorry for you. That a so-called investigator like you could swallow this deception, hook, line and sinker was unbelievable.
But this is only one of the several stage-managed massacres that your Ouattara friend organized to fool the world that Gbagbo was instructing soldiers to commit massacres.
By the way, do you know that even when Ouattara’s “dozos” went to kill pro-Gbagbo supporters, those deaths were blamed on Gbagbo supporters?
Whilst you are at it, please find time to visit Douekoué, where a report of human Rights Watch stated among other things: “In village after village investigated by Human Rights Watch, republican Forces combatants killed, raped, and pillaged the predominantly Guere population”. I suppose these would not interest you because those who master-minded or ordered the massacres are among the victors who have welcomed you to Cote d’Ivoire.
Part of the HRW report stated: “In at least 10 villages around Toulepleu and Blolequin, villagers said they hid in the bush and watched as the Republican Forces set fire to houses and buildings used to store crops and seeds, slaughtered animals and stole everything of value”.
I do not suppose you would be interviewing these Ouattara victims because they would not fit your game-plan.
If you were to be really interested in being impartial, it would be unthinkable for you not to investigate Ouattara and Soro. But that is how things are in the world these days.
THE INSIGHT