Deputy President William Ruto’s case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has taken a new twist after the court has allowed has allowed evidence extracted from his post-poll chaos file to be used against lawyer Paul Gicheru.
The evidence will be transferred to Gicheru’s case with confidentiality and redaction of some details to conceal the identities of witnesses.
Judge Miatta Maria Samba also directed the Prosecution to inform the Defence on the nature of the protective measures concerning witnesses mentioned in the case against Ruto and radio journalist Joshua arap Sang.
“The urgency invoked with the chamber seems to stem from the face that the prosecution did not include the current records in its previous request, despite it being foreseeable. While the chamber does not consider that prejudice to the defence has occured, it reminds the prosecution to display the appropriate and necessary standard of diligence when making its submissions” stated the Judge.
Gicheru is facing witness tampering charges at the Hague-based court.
This is the fifth batch of evidence to be transferred from the Ruto and Sang file to the lawyer’s.
In August, the court directed that some evidence that had been filed against Sang to be transferred to Gicheru’s case.
Samba that the transcripts obtained from several witnesses, who testified against Ruto and Sang, be transferred to Gicheru’s suit.
The judge said the prosecution will rely on the transferred transcripts as evidence against Gicheru.
The Prosecution, on their part, stated the information obtained from the two former suspects’ files was “crucial”.
Gicheru surrendered to the ICC in November 2020 following an arrest warrant issued by the ICC over allegations of witness interference.
According to the prosecutor, one witness (P-0274) narrated that Gicheru informed them that they needed to reach out and buy out everyone involved in the cases in order to stop them from assisting the ICC.