The International Criminal Court (ICC) has thrown a spanner into Kenyan politics after it referred a non-cooperation case against the country’s President Uhuru Kenyatta to the Assembly of State Parties (ASP) for action.

The Hague-based court ruled on Tuesday that the East African government did not cooperate in the crimes against humanity case against President Kenyatta. It terminated the case on March 13, last year amid allegations of tampering with the evidence and witnesses.

Fatou Bensouda, ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, filed a case before the court’s judges in November 2013, to have Kenya declared non-cooperative in the case against Kenyatta.

All the member states are bound by the Rome Statute of 2002 that established the court, to fully cooperate, failure to which the matter is referred to ASP or United Nations (UN) Security Council.

“The Republic of Kenya failed to take all reasonable steps to execute a request for cooperation from the court, including by not providing clear, relevant and timely responses or taking any meaningful steps to compel production of requested information,” read the ruling made by the Trial Chamber V (B) judges.

The East African nation now faces possible sanctions from the ASP or the UN Security Council, Citizen reported.

The Assembly of State Parties will discuss Kenya’s non-cooperation at the next meeting, set for Nov. 16 to 24 in The Netherlands.

Any ruling made by the ASP or UN Security Council will bind Kenya in future engagements with the court.

Bensouda said that the Kenyan government had failed to corporate in the case by failure to submit relevant material such as Kenyatta’s bank and phone records at the time of the violence that hit the nation from December 2007 to February 2008, Daily Nation reported.

Human Rights Watch welcomed the ICC ruling saying that it was proof of how the government had obstructed justice for the victims.

Kenyatta was charged alongside William Ruto, the deputy president, Francis Muthaura, Rtd. Maj-Gen Hussein Ali, Henry Kosgey and Joshua Arap Sang, a radio journalist.

All the cases were eventually dismissed.

The violence led to the deaths of at least 1,133 people while about 650,000 were displaced.  The government released about $105 million to resettle the internally displaced people and ordered a closure of the rescue camps in February this year, Standard reported.

The new ICC decision to refer Kenya to ASP has brought a twist to the president’s bid for a second term during a general election scheduled for August 2017.

Alongside his deputy, William Ruto, they successfully rode on their ICC cases to win the presidential elections in March 2013, by rallying their Kikuyu and Kalenjin tribes behind them.