This is a quick turn around podcast during a new kind of hearing at the International Criminal Court – we can say ‘experimental’ proceedings of conducting a confirmation of charges hearing without an accused present.

It was a way for the ICC to air the alleged crimes of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Ugandan rebel group the LRA. He was the first ever indictee of the court, more than 20 years ago. But he’s never been arrested.

Under the current prosecutor, Karim Khan, prosectors argued that because Kony could not be found, they could hold these hearings without him. That request was approved by the judges, and a defence lawyer Peter Haynes, was appointed, along with a whole team.

But it has been strange, because the defence could not consult with Kony, but also did not want to critique the prosecutor’s approach, as they didn’t want to provide any ammunition and essentially disagreed that there should be these hearings at all.

On the prosecution side they had to squeeze all the material into a couple of days, and explain what happened, to whom and how exactly Kony could be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Beforehand we spoke to Michael Scharf, former Dean of Case Western University, whose Coursera course on international criminal justice is still a very useful classic – 200,000 downloads! And during the hearings we spoke to Lucy Gaynor of University of Amsterdam about how it came across to interested observers. Here’s her great substack.

This podcast has been produced as part of a partnership with JusticeInfo.net, an independent website in French and English covering justice initiatives in countries dealing with serious violence. It is a media outlet of Fondation Hirondelle, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.