{{The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday issued subpoenas for eight prosecution witnesses no longer willing to testify in the case against Deputy President William Ruto and former Kass Presenter Joshua arap Sang.}}<\/p>\n
Trial Chamber V(a) also directed the Registry of the Court to request the Kenyan government to not only serve the subpoenas but to enforce them through threat of sanction if necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chamber found that the Government of Kenya has an obligation to cooperate fully with the court by serving the subpoenas to the witnesses and by assisting in compelling their attendance before the Chamber, by the use of compulsory measures as necessary,\u201d a communiqu\u00e9 from the court read.<\/p>\n
The Chamber said it granted the prosecution\u2019s request for subpoenas after finding that, contrary to the defences\u2019 assertions, it had the power to compel witnesses to appear before it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Rome Statute State Parties did not intend to create an ICC that is \u2018in terms a substance, in truth a phantom\u2019. Rather, they must be presumed to have created a court with every necessary competence, power, ability and capability to exercise its functions and fulfil its mandate in an effective way. These include the power to subpoena witnesses,\u201d the communiqu\u00e9 stated.<\/p>\n
The Chamber composed of Presiding Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, Olga Herrera and Robert Fremr by majority therefore requested that the Kenyan government fulfil its obligations, as set out in the Rome Statute, by:<\/p>\n
\u201cCompelling and ensuring the eight witnesses\u2019 appearance before the Chamber by video-link or before the Chamber convened on the territory of Kenya,\u201d the communiqu\u00e9 continued to state.<\/p>\n
In February Attorney General Githu Muigai told the court that even if it did issue subpoenas, the Kenyan government would not be compelled to enforce them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese persons reserve the right to voluntarily comply with the summons or refuse to do so,\u201d he submitted.<\/p>\n
ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had requested the Chamber to issue the subpoenas after initially seven of her witnesses refused to testify.<\/p>\n
Ruto and Sang\u2019s defence had also argued that the ICC had no power to do subpoena witnesses and that the Prosecutor was trying to deflect blame for the shoddy investigations carried out by her office by blaming the collapse of her case on the refusal of witnesses to testify.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no penalty; there\u2019s no power of arrest, even on these inviolable premises within ICC security. If such a witness was strong-armed, that would be an assault,\u201d Karim Khan, defence counsel for Ruto argued.<\/p>\n
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{{The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday issued subpoenas for eight prosecution witnesses no longer willing to testify in the case against Deputy President William Ruto and former Kass Presenter Joshua arap Sang.}} Trial Chamber V(a) also directed the Registry of the Court to request the Kenyan government to not only serve the subpoenas but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000051731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","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":2000051731,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13965.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13965.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13965.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13965.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13965.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13965.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13965","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000051731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13965"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13965"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}