Former Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea’s Manifestation to the ICC Chamber
Thank you. Your honors, two days ago, the whole world has witnessed the degrading fashion in which a former president of a sovereign country was bundled onto a private aircraft and summarily transported to The Hague.
To us lawyers, this would be called an extrajudicial rendition – to the less legally inclined it was pure and simple kidnapping. My client was denied all access to legal recourse in the country of his citizenship and this – all in the nature of political score settling. Two troubled entities struck an unlikely alliance – an incumbent President who wished to neutralise and choke the legacy of my client and his daughter on the other hand, and a troubled legal institution subject to delegitimization and desperate for a prize catch and a legal show today on the other hand.
With this in mind, it is not surprising that my client was abducted from his country. ICC private jets do not drop out of thin air. That jet which received my client was coordinated in advance. The UAE is not a State Party to the ICC and has no obligation to cooperate with the court. Yet my client sat in transit in that country for more than 5 hours.
I invite the Registry’s representative – present today in the court – to explain to the judges exactly how they believe this transfer was anything other than a gross abuse of process.
Given the precipitous arrival of my client – an elderly man with debilitating medical issues, hard of hearing and poor of sight, he was taken to a hospital for observation. Only this morning have I met him for the first time with less than an hour to discuss legal issues. I have not been able to present him with a hard copy of the arrest warrant because we were not supplied with such. I have not even been able to explain to him what the Prosecution requested when seeking the issuance of the arrest warrant.
This is because the Chamber only published a redacted version of the Prosecution request last night. Other than to identify himself, my client is not able to contribute anything to this hearing.
Most importantly, he is not able, even to tell you that he has been informed of the charges as contained in the arrest warrant for a reason more pertinent to which I alluded in my written request to this honorable Pre-Trial Chamber this morning and which is confidential in nature.
