{"id":5907,"date":"2013-11-29T14:41:03","date_gmt":"2013-11-29T19:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/?p=5907"},"modified":"2013-11-30T09:25:41","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T14:25:41","slug":"kenya-icc-changes-ruling-on-circumstances-of-leaders-trials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/5907","title":{"rendered":"Kenya: ICC Changes Ruling on Circumstances of Leaders’ Trials"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UHURU\"<\/a>The ICC has changed its ruling on a request put forth by Kenya concerning the trials of Kenya\u2019s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.<\/p>\n

According to the latest ruling made on Wednesday, the leaders will no longer have to be physically present at The Hague and can have their lawyers represent them.\u00a0 This change comes after the Assembly of State Parties amended some of the courts’ rules.<\/p>\n

The Kenyan delegation to The Hague welcomed the changes as a victory and thanked the delegates for addressing the country\u2019s concerns.\u00a0 The group also calling for the venue of trials to be changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have achieved a fundamental change in how the ICC functions. This is a major victory for the Kenyan team. It is significant in how the ICC engages,\u201d Foreign Secretary Amina Mohamed said on Thursday after the ruling.<\/p>\n

The United States also the amendments as progressive, given the peculiar nature of the case.<\/p>\n

The U.S.\u2019s representative to the UN Samantha Power said \u201cWe have taken seriously Kenyan concerns about the ongoing trial proceedings. The situation the ICC is confronting in the Kenya cases is a new one. The ICC has never before tried a defendant who is also a sitting head-of-state and who appeared voluntarily in Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Kenyatta is the first sitting President on trial at The Hague. In the past few months, Kenya and the African Union have expressed concerns over the fact that President Kenyatta\u2019s trial is set to come on despite his national duties, adding that the trial belittled his position as President.<\/p>\n

When the UN Security Council met earlier this month they refused a request from the African Union to postpone the ICC\u2019s trial of President Kenyatta and Deputy William Ruto.<\/p>\n

The ICC\u2019s trial chamber said in a statement that, as a general rule, when Mr. Kenyatta\u2019s trial starts in February, he is expected to be present in Court. However the court has reversed its earlier decision after \u201clegal clarifications provided by the Appeals Chamber in its recent judgment on the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny future requests to be excused from attending parts of the trial will be considered on a case by case basis,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n

Deputy William Ruto\u2019s trial commenced in September but has been adjourned for a week to allow him deal with matters at home related to the deadly Westgate mall attack in Nairobi which left 67 people dead and many injured.<\/p>\n

Photo of Kenya’s leaders. [TVC News]<\/p>\n

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The ICC has changed its ruling on a request put forth by Kenya concerning the trials of Kenya\u2019s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto. According to the latest ruling made on Wednesday, the leaders will no longer have…<\/span> Read more ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[131,4966],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}