Witness row with ICC over evidence withdrawal

By Isaiah Lucheli

NAIROBI,KENYA: An International Criminal Court (ICC) Witness who withdrew his evidence against the Deputy President William Ruto has protested over failure by the trial chamber to acknowledge his affidavits.

In his petition, the witness identified as K15 faults ICC over its continued insinuation that he was still their witness despite having forwarded four sworn affidavits to the prosecutor’s office withdrawing all the audio and written statements attributed to him.

The witness whose testimonies the prosecutor’s office used in obtaining confirmation of charges in the case involving Deputy President and Radio Journalist Joshua Arap Sang, withdrew his evidence in February this year and wants the ICC to remove his name from the list of witnesses.

In his petition he exposes how witnesses were coached by the prosecution, he also bares the dishing out of money to witnesses by ICC officials and how they had extracted evidence from witnesses under the influence of alcohol.

“I am aware that the prosecution presented a total of approximately 3,000 pages of evidence which they attributed to me when the case came up for confirmation but I withdrew as a witness in a sworn affidavit dated February 7, 2013, which was forwarded to the prosecutor’s office by my advocates,” the witness submitted in his petition.

He noted that the office of the prosecutor has however failed to confirm to him or his lawyers whether they received the affidavits or that they had removed his name from the list of prosecution witnesses.

“The office of the prosecutor continues to regard me as a prosecution witness when I am not and this has now constrained me to directly write to the chamber for the purposes of raising some issues that may be of interest to the court and the parties to the matter now pending before this court,” he submitted.

He expresses concern over the process and the manner in which his alleged statements were obtained by the investigators and the office of the prosecutor and the events that occurred prior to the confirmation of the Charges.

“I do this in appreciation of the fact that the Rome Statute whose contents I have familiarized myself with over time requires that a trial must be based on truth and that there must be impartial investigations,” he argued.

He recalls that he was approached by the Office of The Prosecutor (OTP) to be their witness in the case in the year 2010 and he was designated as witness number 8 during the confirmation hearing and as K15 by Victims and Witness Unit (VWU).

“I am aware that several other people were recruited as witnesses. The office of the prosecutor never conducted any investigations on the ground as the basis for what they are calling my testimony,” he submits.

Other issues he is raising include that the ICC officials inserted in the statement attributed to him numerous allegations that were false and this happened in Arusha and later in Netherlands.

“It would be a matter of interest to the chamber for the prosecution to produce the audio tapes/recordings done in Arusha and those done in the Netherlands for the court to compare and make a finding on whether the contents of the two sets of recordings are the same,” he said.

Producing of the audio recordings would shade light into the accuracy of the statements that had been attributed to him by the OTP.