Lubanga Trial will Start in January

Yesterday, a Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court set 26 January as the start date for the much postponed trial of Thomas Lubanga, which will now begin approximately three years after he as taken into custody (http://www.icc-cpi.int/press/pressreleases/445.html). It will be the first trial to be held by the Court. Niamh Hayes was there yesterday, and sends this report:

I just spent the morning in the Lubanga Status Conference hearing at the ICC.
There were some pretty major developments, although I
don't know how much gossip had leaked out about it in advance. The prosecution
has made a complete turn-around and agreed to make all the confidential
information available, seemingly without restriction, to both the Chamber and
the defence. The Chamber have already had the chance to review it, and it will
be released to the defence later this week. As a result, the stay of proceedings
has been lifted and a tentative trial date has been set for 26 January. When I
left there was still an argument running about whether to allow temporary
release for Lubanga subject to his remaining in the Hague. There were some
fairly tart statements made by the defence about inexcusable delays due to the
prosecution acting in bad faith in relation to the Article 54(3)(e) material,
although the OTP obviously refused to take any responsibility whatsoever. I just
wandered in to the ICC on spec knowing that there was a status conference
scheduled, although I didn't expect to be there for such a major development! I
thought you'd like to know so you can put it up on the blog.

Niamh says she’s going to the Charles Taylor trial on Thursday, and will let us know if anything interesting is going on there.