Butt's plea for delay in ICC hearing rejected
Salman Butt
Salman Butt's request for a postponement in the ICC tribunal's hearing into the spot-fixing case has been rejected. Michael Beloff QC, the ICC's code of conduct commissioner and a member of the three-man tribunal to hear the charges against Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, made the decision during a lengthy teleconference with Butt's lawyers on Wednesday. "Mr Beloff, the Chairman of the ICC Anti-Corruption Tribunal, following a lengthy telephone hearing and having received written submissions, has ruled that Mr Butt's application is denied and as such, the full hearing will take place as scheduled from 6-11 January 2011 in Doha, Qatar," an ICC release said.
Butt's legal representatives was aiming for a postponement of the hearings to a date after the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had dealt with the case. Independent of the ICC, the Scotland Yard is pursuing its own case against the trio in the UK and has handed over evidence to the CPS.
The CPS is to determine whether the case is strong enough to warrant a criminal prosecution on charges of a conspiracy to defraud, but since receiving two files of evidence from Scotland Yard - in September and November - no decision has been reached.
In the early days of the case, the PCB repeatedly expressed concern over the two separate investigations being pursued against the players and asked for one to be completed before the other was taken up. But the board has since withdrawn support for the trio.
Yasin Patel, a London-based barrister, will handle both the ICC and Scotland Yard cases for Butt. Asif and Amir had not asked for a postponement, though Shahid Karim, who represents Amir, while confident of his client's prospects, said he would have preferred an independent tribunal instead of the three-man panel set up by the ICC for the hearings in Doha.
Apart from Beloff, that panel includes Justice Albie Sachs of South Africa and Sharad Rao of Kenya.
