Kenya has called an emergency session of Parliament for later this week to consider leaving the International Criminal Court (ICC).  President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto face separate trials at the ICC for allegedly whipping up deadly violence in Kenya’s 2007 elections.

But the men deny the allegations, say the charges are based on information supplied by sore-loser political opposition, and the charges should be dropped.  And the African Union accused the ICC of “hunting” Africans because of their race and imposing European hegemony on African nations.  The ICC denies this.

If Kenya does pull out, it would be the first original signer of the Rome Statute that created the ICC to do so.  An ICC spokesman said the cases would move ahead anyway.

Kenya’s Constitutional Court will hear a petition on Wednesday that seeks to prevent both leaders from appearing at the ICC until they serve their full five-year term. The National Conservative Forum (NCF) says the leaders’ presence at their own trial at the Hague-based court could create a power vacuum and a constitutional crisis.

The Kenyan Crisis of 2007-2008 cost 1,500 lives and created 250,000 refugees.