The courtroom - update at the ICC

I have been going to the court hearings again now that I'm back in Holland. In the both Lubanga and Katanga's cases the prosecution has misused the laws. The prosecution has tried to hide behind a law that says that when you get info through confidentiality agreements, that info should be used for the sole purpose of generating new evidence. Also, info that has been received through these agreements is info that you are not aloud to share with any of the other parties. The prosecution is now trying to use all the info that they had gained under the confidentiality agreements in Court without letting the defense see it. In the U.S. this would be ok because we don’t have to give the defense evidence that will help to show there innocence, but at the ICC that is a rule that should not be broken. By breaking this law, the prosecution is making the trial an unfair trial. The bench in the Lubanga case has staid the trial because the prosecution is making the trial an unfair one. (To stay a trial, for those of you that don't know, is the same as halting the trial until the prosecution can get it together.) Upon a stay in a trial, the accused is supposed to be released until the trial is started again, but the prosecution is now trying to appeal the stay saying that the trial is still fair. Unfortunately, for the prosecution everyone thinks that the trial was not going to be fair. Because the prosecution appealed the accused or Lubanga is not let out until the appeal has been resolved, so Lubanga is "getting released" but we will see if it really happens.