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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Kenyan police official said Wednesday fingerprints recently retrieved from a body in a river do not match those of a man lawyers say is a witness in the crimes against humanity trial of Kenya's Deputy President.
The fingerprints belong to Yusuf Hussein, and not Meshack Yebei, the missing witness in the trial at the International Criminal Court 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 Dec 28., was a defense 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 postelection 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 hometown, 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 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.
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