The Netherlands violated immunity of Crime Court

The Netherlands has violated the immunity of the International Criminal Court (ICC) when last year's defense of ex-vice president Jean Pierre Bemba of the Democratic Republic of Congo were listened to. The recordings of telephone conversations must therefore be destroyed. 

The counselor to Bemba's lawyer, Van Berge Henegouwen, made this case in front of the court of justice in The Hague.

Bemba's case has been ongoing since 2010. He is being accused of committing war crimes in the Central African Republic.

Prosecutors of the ICC made the request for the monitoring, as they suspected the defense of manipulating the witnesses. At the end of last year, Bemba's head lawyer Aimé Kilolo-Musamba was arrested, along with several other suspects. They are still on remand at the ICC.

The fact that these prosecutors allowed the defense to be recorded while the case is still ongoing, is a disgrace, according to the lawyers of some of the defense that was arrested last year. The prosecutors would have been able to get their hands on the defense's process strategy in that way.

The Dutch Public Prosecution Authority says that it trusted the legitimacy of the legal advice request from the ICC-prosecutors.