But the appeal chamber, headed by the court's Korean president Sang-Hyun Song, pointed out that the trial chamber had not regarded the damage done by Moreno-Ocampo as irreparable. On the contrary, said the appeal judges: "The trial chamber considered that, if the circumstances changed, a fair trial could conceivably become possible once again."

Would the prosecutor have complied with court orders if sanctions had been imposed? His first reaction would have been to appeal. If that failed, he would have paid the fines from his departmental budget — so the money would simply have gone from one organ of the court to another. Throwing out the case was the only sanction that would have mattered to the prosecutor because it was the only outcome that would have been noticed by the outside world.

But releasing Lubanga without a verdict would have led to distress and incomprehension among the victims of Congo's civil war. Carla Ferstman runs Redress, a human rights organisation that works closely with these people. "Protracted delays in this case have contributed to victims' sense of hopelessness," she said. "Those who suffered the terrible events in Ituri deserve a full and fair consideration of these allegations."

If this case had been tried at the Old Bailey, these victims would have had no rights at all. Under the common law system of prosecutions, the power of the state is invoked against the defendant and victims are relegated to the status of witnesses.

But the great innovation of the treaty that set up the ICC in 1998 is that it allows victims to participate in cases through lawyers appointed on their behalf. Convicted defendants may even be ordered to pay reparations.

Admirable though this may be, it has already led to delays and complications in the Lubanga case. And it seems to have influenced the appeals chamber, which said that allowing the trial to continue would be in the interests of victims as well as the accused.

But what an impact the appeal judges would have made if they had upheld the decision of the trial chamber. They would have shown that their court valued the right to a fair trial more highly than the tattered reputation of its lawless prosecutor.