ICC ‘dissenting judge’ Kaul dies

A judge who dissented during the pre-trial hearing of cases facing four Kenyans at the ICC has died three weeks after he resigned on health grounds.

The ICC stated that Mr Justice Hans-Peter Kaul died on Monday after a long period of serious illness that had led him to resign from the International Criminal Court on July 1. He had been with the ICC for 11 years.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that the former ICC judge has passed away,” read the statement.

Described as the “dissenting judge”, Mr Kaul, a German, had said at the pre-trial hearing in 2012 that the ICC should decline jurisdiction in the case against Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, Mr William Ruto, radio presenter Joshua arap Sang and former head of Public Service Francis Muthaura, whose case was later dropped.

Justice Kaul was born on 25 July 1943.

He was of the view that the crimes facing the four Kenyans did not fall within the ambit of the court because the prosecutor had not proved that they were committed “in furtherance of an organisational policy”.

He observed that Mungiki and the network whose structures the accused were alleged to have used to commit the crimes did not meet the attributes of an “organisation” as envisaged in the Rome Statute.

The judge sat in the pre-trial Bench with Justices Ekaterina Trendafilova and Cuno Tarfusser.

THREE-YEAR TERM

Justice Kaul was elected by the States Parties to the Rome Statute for a three-year term in February 2003 and re-elected in 2006 for nine more years.

He was a member of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Division, serving as the Division’s president from 2004 to 2009, as well as from April 8, 2014, until his resignation. He was the ICC’s second vice-president from 2009 to 2012.