00:00Two days ago, the whole world has witnessed the degrading fashion in which a former president
00:11of a sovereign country was bundled into a private aircraft and summarily transported
00:18to The Hague. To us lawyers, this would be called an extrajudicial rendition. To the
00:27less legally inclined, it was a pure and simple kidnapping. My client was denied all
00:36access to the legal recourse in the country of his citizenship, and this all in the nature
00:44of political score settling. Two troubled entities struck an unlikely alliance, an incumbent
00:53president who wished to neutralize and choke the legacy of my client and his daughter,
01:01on the other hand, and a troubled legal institution subject to delegitimization and desperate
01:09for a price cut and a legal show today, on the other hand. With this in mind, it is not
01:17surprising that my client was abducted from his country. ICC private jets do not drop
01:25out of the thin air. That jet which received my client was coordinated in advance. The
01:34UAE is not a state party to the ICC and has no obligation to cooperate with the court,
01:43yet my client sat in transit in that country for more than five hours. I invite the registry's
01:52representative to present today in court to explain to the judges exactly how they believe
01:59this transfer was anything other than a gross abuse of process. Given the precipitous arrival
02:09of my client, an elderly man with debilitating medical issues, hard of hearing, and poor of
02:17sight, he was taken to a hospital for observation. Only this morning have I met him for the first
02:26time with less than an hour to discuss legal issues. I have not been able to present him
02:37with a hard copy of the arrest warrant because we were not supplied with such. I have not even
02:45been able to explain to him what the prosecution requested when seeking the issuance of the arrest
02:51warrant. This is because the chamber only established a redacted version of the prosecution
02:58request last night. Other than to identify himself, my client is not able to contribute anything
03:06to this hearing. Most importantly, he is not able even to tell you that he has been informed
03:14of the charges as contained in the arrest warrant for a reason more pertinent to which
03:23I alluded in my written request to this honorable pretrial chamber this morning and which is
03:30confidential in nature. Accordingly, I repeat my respectful request, which was rejected this
03:38morning, to postpone the substantive aspect of this hearing to the next week when I will have
03:45the opportunity to sit with my client and to explain to him what the confirmation hearing is
03:53and what the disclosure is and how the prosecution alleges that he committed crimes. I thank the
04:00court for its attention and regret to say that I do not have instructions to continue my submission
04:07any further today. Thank you.
04:23you
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