By LUCIANNE LIMO
Defence lawyers representing the Ocampo Four have said they will not go to trial without knowing the identities of the prosecution witnesses.
They said they must know the witnesses to enable them adequately prepare for the trials.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo made his first submission to the Trial Chamber V on Wednesday and sought to bar the four accused from knowing their accusers until the case proceeds to full trial.
Ocampo requested that the identities of witnesses be disclosed to the defence only after the jurisdictional appeal is resolved and when it is certain that the two cases will proceed to trial.
“There is no way we will go to trial without knowing the witnesses. We must know who they are,” said one of the defence lawyers who requested anonymity.
Probative value
He said the defence teams must be furnished with the list of witnesses to enable them investigate them, where they were during the post-election violence and their credibility,” he added.
During the confirmation hearing last year, the defence teams of the then Ocampo Six tore into the prosecution’s evidence as they sought to discredit the prosecution witnesses.
The defence team representing Eldoret North MP William Ruto and radio journalist Joshua arap Sang claimed that witnesses One, Two, Six and Eight were not reliable as they were self-confessed criminals who participated in the post-election violence.
The chamber judges, however, rejected their arguments saying the witnesses’ possible involvement in the commission of the crimes does not automatically render them unreliable and/or not credible, such that their evidence should be excluded or provided a lower probative value.
Uhuru Kenyatta’s defence team trashed Ocampo’s evidence saying it contained “zero probative value” and that it was largely sourced from anonymous witnesses whose credibility is totally questionable and that they have given evidence to that effect”.
