ICC judges will Tuesday morning decide whether or not they will move Deputy President William Ruto’s trial to November.
Close confidantes said a decision had been reached for him to attend the status conference. His head of Press service, Mr David Mugonyi, had earlier said he was not aware of such arrangements.
The Deputy President however flew out last evening for The Hague.
The status conference is expected to discuss Mr Ruto’s request to have his trial moved to November as well as ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s request to add five witnesses to their list and modalities of the accused’s participation in the trial.
Ms Bensouda has accused the government of undermining the court’s investigations thereby limiting the evidence available to the trial judges.
Ms Bensouda, in her response to the government’s submission on the status of cooperation with the ICC filed by Attorney-General Githu Muigai, said the State had failed to provide the “most critical documents and records”.
This, she said, was despite her office’s exhaustive efforts to have the government provide the documents.
“The outstanding documents and records that the OTP has requested from the GoK have been pending for periods that range from one to three years,” she said in her submissions dated May 10.
“The individual and cumulative effect of the GoK’s actions has been to undermine the investigation in these cases and limit the body of evidence available to the Chamber at trial,” she went on.
Even though she stated that the government had provided some cooperation and had complied with a number of their requests, most critical documents and records sought by the prosecution still remain outstanding.
Ms Bensouda has previously indicated that the government has blocked the ICC from accessing wealth declarations of the suspects and reports of the National Security Intelligence Service at the time of the post-election violence.
Exhaustive efforts
On the complete minutes of the National Security Advisory Committee, which the government says it had provided, Ms Bensouda said: “This is misleading. The prosecutor requested these materials in August 2010 after we exchanged several letters with the GoK regarding the requested documents…. the GoK produced some, but not all, of the requested documents.”
She said the compilation of an accused financial data was a standard law enforcement practice and there was no reason why the Kenyan Government could not deliver.
Some 1,133 people died and 650,000 were displaced in the 2007/08 violence.
Ms Bensouda further said the government had also failed to facilitate the prosecution access to police officers, who may provide them with crucial information regarding their role in the 2008 post-election violence.
She says her office had requested interviews with five Provincial Commissioners and a similar number of senior police officers in vain.
Source:nation.co.ke
