ICC prosecutor Moreno Ocampo has won a bid to appeal against the poaching of one of the prosecution lawyers by the defence team of suspect Francis Muthaura.Single judge Ekaterina Trendafilova granted Ocampo the permission to appeal against an earlier decision in which she rejected the prosecutors bid to stop Muthuara from hiring Mr. Essa Faal as his lawyer.
Ocampo had argued that Faal who worked with the prosecution before switching to the defence had access to confidential information which if revealed to the defence would destroy his strategy and disadvantage him. But after loosing the original application to stop Faal's move, ocampo filed yet another one seeking leave to appeal this decision.
Yesterday, Ekaterina agreed that Ocampo's grounds for appeal meets the threshold provided in the statute and should be allowed. “The fact that the Prosecutor is placed in a position whereby he may need to adjust his "strategy [...] and selection of evidence in order to neutralize or mitigate the [alleged] prejudice to [his] case", will in fact affect the expeditious conduct of the proceedings.” “The same holds true if it turned out that Mr. Faal was privy to confidential information "this could derail the trial [and result in the] disqualification of the Defence team in its entirety, and accordingly, a delay in the proceedings is likely to occur,” Ekaterina said in her ruling.
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