Judges at the International Criminal Court – ICC in The Hague have withdrawn the arrest warrant against Vincent Otti, the Second-in-Command of the Lord’s Resistance Army – LRA rebels, who is now assumed dead.
The court found that the only reasonable conclusion is that Otti is no longer alive.
The ICC indicated that further investigative steps are unlikely to result in any additional proof of Otti’s death. The prosecution appended two witness statements and explained that the only eye witness to Otti’s killing must also be assumed dead.
The death of the Ugandan suspect therefore required to terminate the proceedings against Otti, further to which all relevant documents, including any warrants of arrest, are rendered without effect.
The prosecution explained that “all available evidence indicates that Otti was killed in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo in October 2007.” On 8 July 2005, the Chamber issued a warrant against Otti but on two previous occasions, the prosecution made requests for the case against him to be terminated after providing information pointing towards Otti having been killed on or around 2 October 2007 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
