Just like it happened in the opening statements, the defence, prosecution and victims’ lawyer will make their closing remarks.
“Having presented all the testimonies and closing statements, the judges will retire to deliberate on the evidence that has been presented to them in the courtroom not based on assumptions outside of the judicial process in the courtroom,” Kamara asserted.
The review of the evidence by the three trial judges has no timelines but depends on the time they use to analyse evidence and arguments put forth by the defence, prosecution and victims.
Once done with the deliberations, the judges will then give a date when a verdict will be rendered.
The decision could be ‘an innocent verdict, an acquittal or a guilty verdict.’
The accused persons if found guilty can be either be sent to jail or fined or both, or asked for reparation of victims.
“At the ICC if there is a guilty verdict, a sentence will range from a maximum of 30 years imprisonment followed by a fine as and when the judges will determine and also reparation for victims could be determined by the judges. The ICC cannot give a death penalty in the event of a conviction,” Kamara explained.
Even though there is a live link of the proceedings of the ICC cases, there is always a delay of 30 minutes.
This, Kamara says, is to allow the court to redact sensitive information not meant for the public.
She explains only the court gets the full picture of the evidence presented by the prosecution and witnesses.
“This is a mechanism to ensure that if by any chance the name of a protected witness is mentioned or confidential information is disclosed in the courtroom the court will have the possibility to delete that information before it comes to the members of the public,” she explained.
“There is a lot of filing being done and most of what comes out to the public comes out as heavily redacted, meaning confidential information is not there, it will be difficult to put together based on what we see on the screens. We have to continue to wait and follow the process and not come out with a conclusion because of one statement of one party to conclude whether the case is weak or whether the case is strong, only judges can determine that,” she asserted.
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