All assumptions were confirmed when the Chamber asked the Lead Defence Counsel, Catherine Mabille, to provide a tentative date for the resumption of the trial and to make all necessary arrangements for the next witness to testify. "I believe the Chamber knows we had a very short time period to analyze the decision that has been handed down, and we would like to inform you that we were not able to discuss it with our client," replies Mabille. "We have the intention of reassessing the number of witnesses we wish to call before this court (...) then we will have to reflect on the basis of the decision that has just been handed down." she concludes. The Defence also needs time to reflect on the possibility of appealing the judges' decision, but Judge Fulford, anxious to speed up proceedings as much as possible, asks the lawyers to take all feasible steps to resume on Monday the 7th of March.
The alleged corruption of evidence on the part of the Office of the Prosecutor formed the basis of the Defence's request to dismiss the case on the grounds of abuse of process. According to Lubanga's lawyers, the intermediaries who cooperated with the OTP corrupted the case by instigating or assisting Prosecution witnesses with giving false testimony before the Court. The Defence team submitted its application on the 10th of December 2010, after calling witnesses who testified that they had lied to the investigators or that they had taken part in this process of fabricating evidence. "We intend to demonstrate that all individuals presented as child soldiers deliberately lied before this court," said Ms Mabille during the opening of the Defence's case. As the lawyers argued then, some of them were never child soldiers and others the lied about their age and the conditions under which they had been. The Lead Counsel then tried not only to question the evidence relating to child soldiers, but also the credibility of all the testimonies heard before the Court.
Now that the Lubanga's first bet seems to have failed, the Defence case's second phase starts. As they announced in their opening, the lawyers of the Defence team will try to prove firstly, that Thomas Lubanga played no active role in the creation of the UPC military forces and therefore did not deliberately take part in a common plan to recruit minors, and secondly, that Thomas Lubanga, "at the time he was responsible for them," did all he could to demobilise minors. Currently, ten witnesses form the Defence's case second phase.
A public version of the Judges' decision will be issued after all parties had submitted the necessary redactions.
