Key ICC witness in case against lawyer Paul Gicheru goes missing

By , K24 Digital
On Fri, 29 Oct, 2021 11:15 | < 1 min read
Lawyer Paul Gicheru PHOTO/COURTESY

A key witness in the ICC case against Kenyan lawyer Paul Gicheru has reportedly gone missing.

The witness, who was set to issue an oral testimony before the international court, has mysteriously gone out of the reach of the prosecution team.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) claims that they currently cannot locate witness P-0397.

It is reported that the missing witness was also aligned by the prosecution in the collapsed cases of Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Arap Sang.

The prosecution team, through Deputy Prosecutor James Stewart, informed the court on Thursday 28, 2021 that they could not locate the said witness.

Stewart beseeched the court to allow the prosecution use a recorded testimony by the witness in their case against the Kenyan lawyer.

The Deputy Prosecutor revealed to the court that the accounts of the witness were key in the case against the Kenyan lawyer, since they added weight to the bribery charges pressed against Gicheru.

"The prior recorded testimony should be accepted as formally submitted because the witness is unavailable and the documents are reliable," the prosecutor said.

In past court filings, the witness revealed that Gicheru had threatened him and offered him a bribe of Ksh5m, which was to be paid in installments.