THE presiding judge in William Ruto’s case at The Hague has accused his fellow judges, registry and ICC prosecutor of grossly mishandling the Deputy President’s bid to be tried in Kenya or Tanzania.
On Monday, the ICC released the decision of the plenary judges rejecting Ruto’s application to have his case moved to East Africa. Nine judges voted in favour of East Africa but this was just short of the necessary 10 votes to have the cases moved to Nairobi or Arusha.
In a stinging dissent, Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji of Nigeria said the plenary was completely unfair to Ruto. He accused ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of a clear case of “ambush” after she suddenly changed her position on holding parts of the trial in Kenya or Tanzania.
She initially supported the proposal but retracted her position the day before the plenary judges voted on July 11. “It is a method with no legitimate place in any proceedings of an international criminal court of this calibre,” he said.
Eboe-Osuji said the registry received the filing at 6.28pm on July 10 but only disseminated it after the plenary had used it in their determination. “By the morning of the Plenary the judges’ bundles of documents for the plenary had been updated with a new filing by the Prosecution.
In the new filing, the Prosecution now changed their position, registering unequivocal opposition to conducting any part of the hearing in Kenya,” he said. Eboe-Osuji says the late filing left Ruto’s defence without an opportunity to react yet they were the movers of the motion.
“It is truly difficult to avoid a view of what had occurred as an instance of ambush in legal proceedings, regardless of any question of an intention to do so,” he said.
He also complained one annex explaining Bensouda’s change of position was kept confidential which further disadvantaged Ruto. He argued that the plenary should not have accepted the late filing.
The judge further accused Bensouda of not taking “extreme care” to avoid the impression that the ICC is being used to block the political ambitions of Ruto.
“Extreme care was surely called for on the part of the Prosecution in light of the constant complaint of the Defence in this case that it may be that the Prosecution has been allowing itself to be influenced by the preference of certain interests that have stood in opposition to the political ambitions of the accused in the context of Kenyan politics,” he said.
“Such complaints are not ameliorated by any coincidence in the Prosecutor’s change of position in this matter; coming right on the heels of the Open Letter authored by an individual who had also appeared as a petitioner before the Supreme Court of Kenya in a case seeking to nullify the election of the accused in the political office that he now occupies in Kenya,” he said.
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