Patrick Mayoyo receiving the World Social and Environment Responsibility Award in Lille France in 2007.
By TIM ALLEN
Veteran Kenyan investigative journalist Patrick Mayoyo says he has discovered people tormenting him are linking him to the Kenyan case at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
He said a strange man he met yesterday on the streets asked him what he went to do in Netherlands in 2019 and whether he visited The Hague before revealing that was the genesis of his tribulations.
The stranger said some powerful people suspected that he went there on a mission to provide information that could implicate them in the Kenyan (ICC) case or he was a witness.
“It is true I was in Netherlands in May 2019, but it had nothing to do with ICC and I never visited The Hague. I was in Amsterdam and even here, I never met anyone from ICC,” he said.
The stranger told Mr Mayoyo that he had been placed on red alert surveillance following reports claiming he was an ICC collaborator.
Mr Mayoyo said he went to Netherlands to attend a workshop that was being organized for investigative journalists under the initiative private security network investigative journalists.
The initiative was to investigate and hold private security companies accountable for their human rights violations.
Mr Mayoyo who was to investigate activities of international security companies in Kenya did a story titled, “How G4S director sexually harassed employee before sacking her.”
“I never had any engagements with the ICC and I never visited The Hague and I am not an ICC witness. It is painful for someone to concoct such lies in order to harm me,” the Kenyan award-winning journalist said.
He said the stranger told him that a person with a personal grudge against him had cooked up the ICC story and rallied everyone against him using allegations of a deadbeat father.
The latest developments come at a time Mr Mayoyo has made claims of threats to his life and intensified surveillance against him.
Recently Mr Mayoyo cried foul saying he had been prevented from traveling to the US to attend an international conference after some pages were plucked out of his passport.
Mr Mayoyo maintains that he has never had any links with the international court before or during his visit to Netherlands in 2019 adding the story has been hatched by someone with ulterior motives against him.
“To use ICC allegations against an innocent person in order to harm him because of personal differences is not only inhuman but an abuse of power,” he said.
Mr Mayoyo appealed to international human agencies to come out and protect him now that the truth why he is being tormented has come out.
He said the informant who treats him as one of Kenyan’s forthright and professional journalists did not want to see him harmed if he was innocent.
The ICC case was going at The Hague with Kenyan lawyer Paul Gicheru in the dock over interference with witnesses.
However, since Gicheru was found dead at his home in Karen, Nairobi on 26 September 2022 no new directions have been given on the matter.
