The dissenting opinion in summary
RinkInternational criminal court {ICC} Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji has termed the verdict by Trial Chamber V (b) reconsidering its previous decision excusing President Uhuru Kenyatta from continuous presence at trial a
procedural flaw.In his dissenting opinion Judge Eboe-Osuji argued
that the decision that is the object of the Prosecutor's request was the Majority decision that he and Judge Fremr made adding Presiding Judge Kuniko Ozaki was not part of that decision.
"She was then in dissent. As a dissenting judge, she has no standing, in my view, to reconsider a decision that she did not make,β Judge Eboe-Osuji differed.
Eboe-Osuji added that common sense does not permit Judge Ozaki to subrogate herself, as a dissenting judge, into the position of a member of the Majority who is still in the case, in order to revise a decision that a critical member of the deciding Majority had refused to reconsider.
βNo legal authority of any sort has been cited in support of proceeding in that way.
The precedent that this decision sets is a very dangerous one, indeed. It is especially so in this Court, where there are no rules governing reconsideration,β he warned.
He added that following the decision to overturn the majority decision although one of the new majority was not truly a part of the decision being changed then no majority decision will be safe from such practice or precedent.
βThe move strikes at the very core of judicial independence. It is not to be encouraged,β he dissented.
Eboe-Osuji further said the recent developments around the affairs of the Court in recent months must be considered as factorial in the eventual settling of the Court's law, practice and procedure in the matter of proceedings against heads of state and heads of government and their presence during the trials in which they are accused persons.
βThese developments concern events at the African Union, the UN Security Council and the Assembly of States Parties. The African Union insists that no African head of state or head of government should stand trial at the ICC,β he said.
Eboe-Osuji said the AU urged the UN Security Council to defer the Kenyatta case on the basis of article 16 of the Statute reckoning that seven members of the Council voted in favor while the rest abstained and the necessary nine vote majority was not reached to achieve the deferral.
βThe general understanding was that the Security Council members who abstained were of the position that the concerns of the African Union and of Kenya were best addressed at the Assembly of States Parties of the ICC,β he said.
Judge Eboe-Osuji added that at its amplest, the proposal may achieve a minimum of that outcome but whatever be the case, the proposal will generate debates on the floor of the Twelveth session of the ASP in which States Parties will directly express themselves in a manner that may convey a useful picture of state practice that the Appeals Chamber may see fit to take into account in any decision that they may make in respect of the Kenyatta case.
βSuch a picture of state practice that was not present during the Appeals Chamber's deliberation in the Ruto case may well yield a different result in a Kenyatta appeal,β he concluded.
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