Dov Jacobs

To prepare for the upcoming Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court we have teamed up with several ICC observers to create a series of podcasts about the issues that will be on the agenda, both officially and unofficially during the yearly gathering of the court's member states. Find our talk with Alix Vuillemin of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court here. On the issue of African withdrawals from the court we spoke to Dov Jacobs, assistant professor, ICC defence counsel and blogger. That podcast is here. 

On the first day of the ASP we met with Liz Evenson of Human Rights Watch to go over how the court and the prosecutors select cases to investigate and take to trial and the possible impact of Russia's announcement that is was withdrawing its signature from the Rome Statute. Click here to hear what she had to say.

Since judges threw out the case against Kenyan vice-president William Ruto and broadcaster Joshua arap Sang at the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month there has been a lot of discussion that the case could somehow provide a script for other defendants on how to evade justice. In the Ruto Sang case the judges by majority agreed there was not enough evidence to continue with the trial but refused to acquit instead vacating the charges, leaving the possibility for the prosecutor to come back to the case if they find additional evidence. The decision to discontinue the case amid prosecution complaints of witness interference, follows the withdrawal of charges against Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta in March this year where similar accusations were made [IJT-172-176].

IJT spoke to Dov Jacobs, associate professor at Leiden University and a longstanding ICC observer who also works as a legal consultant before the court, about the ruling and its implications.