This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Fingerprints retrieved from a body found in a Kenyan river do not match those of a missing witness in the crimes against humanity trial of Kenya’s deputy president, a police official said on Wednesday.

The fingerprints do not belong to Meshack Yebei, the missing witness in the trial at the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, said John Kariuki, a criminal investigations officer. Yebei’s family had positively identified the body.

DNA tests will determine with certainty who the body belongs to, Kariuki said

Yebei, who went missing on 28 December, was a defence witness in Deputy President William Ruto’s trial, according to Ruto’s lawyer Karim Khan. Ruto and radio journalist Joshua Sang are on trial for crimes against humanity for the 2007-08 post-election violence that killed more than 1,000 people.

The ICC has said Yebei was not a prosecution witness in Ruto’s trial, but the court offered him safe residency. Yebei instead went back to his home town, it said.

After his disappearance, Yebei’s mother received a text message purporting to be from her son saying that he was safe in Uganda with ICC officials, local media reported. The court said its officials had not been in contact with Yebei at the time of his abduction.

Yebei had been contacted during the course of investigations for the Ruto-Sang trial but he was ultimately not included in the witness list, the office of the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said.

Yebei was not included as prosecution witness because, among other reasons, there was information implicating him in a scheme to corrupt prosecution witnesses, the ICC prosecution said in a statement.

The ICC dropped charges against four others, including the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta. The ICC’s chief prosecutor cited a lack of sufficient evidence for the decision, which she attributed to intimidation of witnesses and the Kenyan government blocking her investigation. The prosecution in Ruto’s trial has also made accusations of bribery and witness intimidation.