{{After the collapse of half a dozen cases over atrocities, International Criminal Court prosecutors are seeking to hire forensic experts to reduce their reliance on witness testimony.}}<\/p>\n
Although not the only factor in the court’s failure to secure more than one conviction in a decade, the disappearance of witnesses, doubts over their accounts and withdrawals of their statements have undermined prosecutions over suspected crimes against humanity in Kenya, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
That has stymied a court designed to dispense international justice and discourage war crimes. This week, the ICC began hearing testimony in a trial over Kenya’s 2008 bloodshed.<\/p>\n
Court officials said they had asked donors for a 10 percent increase in next year’s budget from the 115 million euros ($155 million) in 2013. Much of the additional money would pay for expert investigators.<\/p>\n
Some past cases relied too much on witness testimony and had gone to trial with too little evidence, said Phakiso Mochochoko, a senior official in the court’s Office of the Prosecutor.<\/p>\n
“We are looking at possibilities for cyber investigations and other forensic evidence we could collect,” said Mochochoko.<\/p>\n
The planned overhaul in investigations follows the replacement of high-profile chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo by Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda last year.<\/p>\n
When it comes to relying on witnesses, the Kenyan cases show how things can go wrong.<\/p>\n
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, face separate charges of orchestrating post-election clashes in 2008 which left about 1,200 people dead.<\/p>\n
agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{After the collapse of half a dozen cases over atrocities, International Criminal Court prosecutors are seeking to hire forensic experts to reduce their reliance on witness testimony.}} Although not the only factor in the court’s failure to secure more than one conviction in a decade, the disappearance of witnesses, doubts over their accounts and withdrawals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000048394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-10531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000048394,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10531.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10531.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10531.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10531.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10531.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10531.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000048394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10531"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=10531"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=10531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}