Witness admits lying to International Criminal Court team

Kenya: A prosecution witness in the trial of Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been declared hostile after disowning his evidence.

The witness, who began testifying on Monday, told the court he lied to the ICC investigators.

But an application by the defence team to have the prosecution stopped from cross-examining the witness after being declared hostile was rejected by the court.

Ruto and Sang are on trial for crimes against humanity said to have been committed during the Post-election violence in 2007-2008 when over 1,200 people were killed.

A witness is declared hostile after differing with the prosecution and openly denouncing his evidence in favour of the accused.

This allows the prosecutor to turn round and cross-examine the witness as a way of extracting the truth about his testimony.

Yesterday, the witness told the court that he had alerted the prosecution in 2013 that he and other witnesses had also lied to implicate Ruto.

He claimed the investigators were annoyed because he was revealing the information to them too late in the day.

That evidence was not disclosed by the prosecution to the defence, until yesterday, the court heard.

The prosecution told the court that the witness was totally unreliable and incredible.

This prompted Presiding Judge Eboe Osuji to ask them why they called an unreliable witness and what they intended to achieve by putting him on the witness stand.

 Suspend evidence

The defence applied to have his evidence suspended and a thorough investigation into his allegations conducted, but the prosecution opposed the application and asked to be allowed to cross-examine the witness.

The judges said the defence would be free to make the application again when cross-examining the witness and the court would make a ruling. The prosecution continued cross examining the witness in a closed session for the rest of the day.