Deputy President William Ruto opposes prosecutor’s bid to amend ICC charges

Deputy President William Ruto's lead counsel Karim Khan. [Photo: File/Standard]

By FELIX OLICK

With just a week to the commencement of his trials at The Hague, Deputy President William Ruto is fighting to block the prosecution from amending charges against him.

In a new application to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Ruto has asked the judges to reject a request by Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for leave to appeal a decision to expand the scope of his charges.

Bensouda is seeking permission from Pre-Trial Chamber II judges to include further incidents of rape, murder and deportation that allegedly took place between December 30 and 31, 2007.

The defence

But through his lead counsel Karim Khan, Ruto maintained that the late attempt to amend charges against him to include the two days would result in an unfair burden for his defence team and would unduly compromise his rights.

“According to the court’s established jurisprudence, the rights and interests of the victims are secondary to and must not result in prejudice to the fair trial rights of an accused,” the application read in part.

Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova, sitting as a single judge, had rejected Bensouda’s application arguing that allowing such an amendment in the absence of any justification would be an ‘unfair burden’ to the defence, which would require time to conduct its investigations.

 “This course of action would unduly compromise the rights of the accused persons to be informed promptly of the nature, cause and content of the charges, to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of their defence and to be tried without undue delay,” the single judge ruled.

Trials against Sang and Ruto are scheduled to kick off next Tuesday.

However, in her request for permission to appeal the decision of the single judge last week, Bensouda warned that if she is not allowed to amend charges, her case may be unfairly weakened.

The prosecutor claimed that by excluding events that happened on December 30 and 31, 2007 in the greater Eldoret area from the scope of the trial, amounts to denying her office the chance to charge and prosecute Ruto and Sang for crimes allegedly committed in those locations during those dates.

“The Chamber’s Decision detrimentally affects the Prosecution’s case because it curtails its temporal scope for the purposes of the guilt or innocence of the accused in the greater Eldoret area,” Bensouda argued

“Therefore, the Prosecution may need to reassess its case theory and strategy as well as the presentation of the evidence, including the order of the witnesses. This may require further investigations and applications to add new evidence and witnesses and therefore further litigation.”