Building on a growing body of scholarship that accentuates the communicative foundations and dimensions of international criminal justice, the article explores how defendants and their defence teams navigate the discursive battleground in the course of trials at the International Criminal Court (icc). Given the central role of narratives in the construction and (de)legitimation of identities, and their profound implications for perceptions about trial participants, the article seeks to understand what implications defences’ relative disadvantage vis-á-vis the prosecutions’ in terms of institutional support, access to resources and media visibility, have for their strategies of narrative control and positioning. To this end, the article charts the discursive battle sites at global, regional and local levels, maps specific strategies of narrative control in these sites, and zooms in on two prominent themes in the identity construction of defendants within and beyond the icc courtroom.

本文以越来越多强调国际刑事司法的交流基础和维度的学术研究为基础，探讨了被告及其辩护团队如何在国际刑事法院（ icc）的审判过程中驾驭话语战场。）。考虑到叙事在身份建构和合法化中的核心作用，及其对审判参与者看法的深远影响，本文试图了解辩护方相对于检方在制度方面的相对劣势有何影响。支持、资源获取和媒体知名度，对他们的叙事控制和定位策略具有重要意义。为此，本文绘制了全球、区域和地方层面的话语战场，绘制了这些站点中叙事控制的具体策略，并重点关注了国际刑事法院法庭内外被告身份建构的两个突出主题。