17. On 20 November 2007, the Court of Appeal struck out the Respondent' s Criminal Appeal No. 276 of 2006. This decision enabled Criminal Application No. 16 of 2006 to proceed. 18. On 26 September 2008, the High Court dismissed in its totality Criminal Application No. 16 of 2006. On 26 November 2008, the Applicants appealed this decisio n of the High Court to the Court of Appeal in Criminal Appeal No. 353 of 2008, and on 14 February 2011, the appeal was struck out for being incompetent as the Appellants had not obtained leave to appeal. They then filed a fresh appeal to the Court of Appeal in Criminal Appeal No. 27 of 2011 ; the Court of Appeal allowed the Appeal on 19 March 2013, on the basis that the trial High Court judge erred in decidin g the case on the merits without ruling on the preliminary points of law raised by the Respondent. The case was therefore remitted back to the High Court for a dec1sion on the preliminary points of law. 19. The Applicants aver that thereafter, they filed an Application before this Court, arguing that they have exhausted local remedies as: "(a) On the crimina l charges, there has been an inordinate delay of seven years before their case has been brought to trial; and (b) On the violation of their rights, their application has gone up to the Court of Appeal". 20. The Applicants also point out that their Applications have proceeded all the way to the Court of Appeal twice, both times without success. To that extent, they argue that within the judicial system of the Respondent, they have exhausted all local remedies. Furthermore, they allege that the Court of Appeal of the Respo ndent "ought to have treated the repeated applications with the objective of obtaining substantive justice in the matter without undue regard to technicalities of the law, especially of the procedural law". 21 . In conclusion, the Applicants maintain that they only brought the Application to this Court after they realised that the Respondent was taking too long to initiate the proceedings directed by the Court of Appeal in Case 79 of 2011 . t\ 9 ~ _/(_.- ~ M~ _. > ~ ~~ -U- s (