Yesterday,
the International Criminal Court announced that the court is now willing to
push President Uhuru Kenyatta’s trial to February next year. The ICC prosecutor
Fatou Bensouda who was early keen on ensuring that Uhuru’s trial commences on November
12th, has now inclined that she will not oppose Uhuru’s bid to have
the trials start on February 3rd, next year. Bensouda explained her stand through an
application to the Trial chambers, citing that the prosecution will not be in a
position to bring in two of its new witnesses due to lack of enough time for
preparation if the trail is to start on November. She also explained that with
the trial starting on February next year, the defense team will have enough
time to investigate the new witnesses. In addition, Bensouda admitted to the
ICC judges that the other six witnesses the prosecution has may not necessarily
help her case since they would only give third person accounts which do not
build a strong case. This hence put her in a fix with no option but to support
the postponement of the trial to 2014.
The
prosecutor however insists that the trial must start immediately on 3 February
2014 and cannot be further pushed to a later date citing that President
Kenyatta and his defense team now have adequate time to prepare for the trail.
This
new development comes amid numerous supports from the African Union (AU) and
the Jubilee Coalition urging President Uhuru to skip the trial which was set to
begin on November 2013, saying that the trials against President Uhuru and his
deputy William Ruto should be deferred back to Kenya to allow the two to carry
out their State duties.
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