Reparations Center for Victims of War CrimesInternational Criminal Court Appeals Judge Akua Kuenyehia has removed herself from hearing the appeal of the trial court decision suspending the case against Thomas Lubanga of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Judge Kuenyehia sat on the pre-trial chamber that approved the warrant and initial indictment against Lubanga. Another judge who has not been involved…
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo spoke with blogger Melanie Gouby and played down the Trial Chamber’s decisions to suspend the case against Thomas Lubanga, and to release him from custody. In the interview, available here, Moreno-Ocampo argued the court’s order was the sign of a strong court and that his office was in…
Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has ordered the release of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, based on the court’s order last week to stay the proceedings. That order, blogged about here, found that the prosecutions refusal to obey court orders to disclose the identity of witnesses to the defense prevented a fair trial…
Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, has suspended proceedings in the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. Lubanga was the first accused to appear before the court in 2007. In January 2009, the trial began, in January 2010, the defense began presenting its case. The defense has presented witnesses…
The defense team for Thomas Lubanga at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has claimed that a witness testified under a false name. The witness, who testified as Dieudonné Tonyfwa Urochi, and is participating in the case as both a witness for the prosecution and as a victim seeking reparations before the court. The testimony, report…
Thomas Lubanga Dyilo’s defense team again raised concerns about the accuracy of the translations and transcripts of the proceedings. Defense counsel Catherine Mabile reported to the chamber that the defense had found “extremely important discrepancies” in the testimony of some witnesses. It is unclear what the discrepancies were. The Open Society Institute blogged the report…
The Office of the Prosecutor in the Thomas Lubanga Case has offered additional evidence that the witnesses who testified in the prosecution case were child soldiers. The defense had offered evidence that at least some of the witnesses were not young enough to be considered child soldiers under international law, and that others were not…
The International Criminal Court trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was suspended this week for a two week trip for the defense to the Democratic Republic of Congo for important “research,” presumably this means further investigation into the previous allegations that prosecution witnesses lied or were paid to lie about being child soldiers. The trial was…
The Open Society Institute offered its summary of the Lubanga defense on its Lubangatrial.org website, boiling down the arguments to “witnesses lied, Lubanga not guilty.” The website’s summary, and unofficial transcript of the opening argument of Catherine Mabille, defense counsel for Thomas Lubanga is available here. Catherine Mabille is a Paris-based lawyer and argued in…
Lubanga defense witness Claude Nyeki Django testified for the third day that Thomas Lubanga’s Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) did not draft child soldiers. The proceeding stopped for a time because Django broke down on the stand for a second time. After meeting with a psychologist from the Victims and Witness Unit (VWU) of the…
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