The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced that Mr Justice Hans-Peter Kaul has died after a long period of serious illness. The ICC statement said that Mr Kaul died on Monday as the result of an illness that led him to resign from the ICC on July 1. He would have been 71 on Friday and had been with the ICC for 11 years.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that the former ICC judge has passed away,” read the statement.

ICC SHOULD NOT HEAR CASE AGAINST KENYANS – JUDGE KAUL

Justice Hans-Peter Kaul from Germany was described as the “dissenting judge” after he said at the pre-trial hearing in 2012 that the ICC could not hear the case against Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, radio presenter Joshua arap Sang and former head of Public Service Francis Muthaura. The case against Muthaura was later dropped.

The other judges on the ICC’s pre-trial Bench were Justices Ekaterina Trendafilova and Cuno Tarfusser.

Justice Kaul’s opinion was that the charges against the four Kenyans did not fall within the ambit of the court because the prosecutor had not proved that they were committed “in furtherance of an organisational policy”. His view was that Mungiki and the network whose structures the four accused were alleged to have used to allegedly commit the crimes did not meet the definition of an “organisation” as set out in the Rome Statute.