Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto on Friday suffered a twin blow after the International Criminal Court rejected his bid for postponement of his trial even as African leaders renewed their criticism of the Hague-based court at the UN General Assembly.

The ICC also rejected a request by Mr Ruto to reconsider its earlier decision against his trials continuing in his absence.

The trial of Mr Ruto, which was adjourned following the terrorist attack in Nairobi on Saturday 21, resumes on October 2.

The second decision means that Mr Ruto will continue attending all sittings pending a final decision on the matter by the Appeals Chamber. Based on the decision, Mr Ruto will be in the Hague up to October 11 instead of October 4 as had earlier been planned.

The two judgments will anger African leaders even more, after they declared to the UN General Assembly last week, that they were not happy with the way the ICC was treating Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy Mr Ruto.

READ: African leaders take ICC battle to the UN

Recently, the Trial Chamber presiding over President Kenyatta’s case rejected a request by his defence team to push the commencement date to January next year, arguing that nothing new had arisen to necessitate the change of date.

The president’s lawyers had argued that they required more time to analyse evidence on telephone data. At the UN General Assembly, African leaders devoted portions of their respective speeches to denunciations of ICC’s actions regarding Africa generally and Kenya specifically.

The Heads of State of Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda all accused the ICC of bias against Africa.

By persisting in its prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, The Hague-based court is also undermining efforts to achieve national reconciliation in Kenya, the leaders charged.

Kenya did not plead its own case, however.

President Kenyatta cancelled his plan to travel to the UN two days prior to the attack on the Westgate Mall. He explained that Mr Ruto’s presence at The Hague required that he remain in the country in order to prevent a “power vacuum” from developing.

But Foreign Minister Amina Mohammed, who did travel to New York, did not address the UN as Kenya’s representative.

The co-ordinated attacks on the ICC indicate that there will be considerable support for a mass pullout from the court’s jurisdiction when the AU meets on October 13 to discuss that possibility.

While it is not clear that the 54-member grouping will achieve the two-thirds majority needed for such a policy decision, the prospect of several African nations challenging the court’s legitimacy has the US and other Western nations worried.

Johnnie Carson, formerly the top Africa diplomat in the Obama administration, suggested at a conference in Washington last week that the US is bracing for what it would view as a negative outcome of the AU summit.

By KEVIN KELLY and JEFF OTIENO