African Church Information Service
Henry Neondo
18 June 2001
Kigali — Seven years after its establishment immediately following the genocide in Rwanda and more than four years since the beginning of the first trial, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR based in Arusha, Tanzania, has to date handed down arrests to only nine individuals and has "thus failed in its mandate", says the International Crisis Group, ICG.
In its African report No 30 released on June 7, the ICG says that of the 69 indicted suspects, 45 have been arrested. But none of them is among the alleged masterminds of the genocide including Col Theoneste Bagosora who has been in prison for five years.
Most of the masterminds of the genocide, whether officially indicted by the ICTR or not (due to lack of evidence) are able to live freely in many countries, including the Democratic Republic Congo DRC, Gabon, Kenya and also France and Belgium.
The verdict in Arusha by the ICTR in the case of Ignace Bagilishema, made early June is only the ninth in seven years - "a lamentable record", says the ICG.
With nine judges, three trial chambers, over 800 employees and an annual budget of 90 million dollars, "the tribunal, bogged down by incompetence and bureaucratic infighting is finding it hard to live up to its mandate", says ICG.
Five judges out of nine have spent more than a year and a half without hearing a substantial case: In March this year, one had not heard such a matter for 28 months.
Between July 1999 and October 2000 the Bagilihshema case was the only substantial one before the court. Not one of the alleged masterminds of the genocide is said to have been brought to trial, including one in prison for five years.
"There is now a serious risk that those already in custody will be released because they have been held for too long without trial," says ICG.
In its new report, the Tribunal Penal International Pour Le Rwanda: L'urgence de Juger, the ICG calls on the UN Security Council to review the performance of the tribunal and its judges.
It also demands a trial schedule giving priority to suspects already in custody, and importantly set a final date for the completion of investigations.
According to the ICG' Africa programme co-director Fabienne Hara, "seven years is a long time and that to date, those who committed the genocide are et to be known is an indication of failure of the Rwanda Tribunal. It has ailed to meet its basic mandate o deliver justice to the people of Rwanda nd provide a record of events".
Though ICTR points out some of its significant achievements made so far, for example the jailing of the former Prime Minister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda, CG insists that it is still noticeable that "the most important suspects have not been arrested". ICG report names a number of key suspects still at large, and the countries where they have found a home.
Among some points in ICTR's favour, ICG says also include providing indisputable recognition of the Rwandan genocide. ICTR has also politically neutralized the "Hutu power" movement agenda of Tutsi extermination.
However, seven years on, it has still not been able to shed light on the design, mechanisms, chronology, organisation and financing of the genocide, nor has it answered the key question - who committed the genocide?
Compared to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, ICTY, the ICTR has suffered from international disinterest and a shocking lack of media attention. That is in part because the jurisdiction of the ICTR is limited to the trail of crimes committed in 1994 while the ICTY's is not subject to time limit.
The symbolic existence of the tribunal has also not discouraged the ongoing protection in certain capitals (Kinshasa, Brazzaville, Nairobi among others) of more than a dozen powerful Rwandan Hutus who are among the principal genocide suspects.
Neither does it appear to have dissuaded the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide and the war between the former Rwanda government of the late Juvenal Habyriamana and the now ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, RPF.
The perpetrators of the genocide gathered and rearmed with complete impunity in the refugee camps of eastern Congo, leading to the resumption of the war by the RPF in 1996 and again1998 on the territory of the DRC where war crimes and crimes against humanity continue to be committed on both sides.
For majority of Rwandans, the ICTR is a useless institution, an expedient mechanism for the international community to absolve itself responsibilities for the genocide and its tolerance of the crimes of the RPF.
The Rwandan government complains of the squandering of money and resources while 130, 000 prisoners fill its jails and its courts have tried more than 4,000 suspects.
The survivors of the genocide find the tribunal distant and indifferent to their lot, and the victims of the crimes of the RPF denounce it as an instrument of the Kigali regime, seeing the ICTR as a symbol of victor's justice.
The important task of the ICTR seems to have been lost in daily dysfunction and internal bureaucratic conflict. The geographic split of the office of the prosecutor between Arusha, Kigali and The Hague has seriously impeded investigations and the long absence of judges and defence lawyers has not assisted trial proceedings.
And as the ICG calls for reforming the operation of the tribunal, it also called on all countries to assist in delivering justice to the victims of the genocide, by extending the jurisdiction of their own courts to embrace international law and try cases of crime against humanity, regardless of where the crimes took place.
They cite Belgium as a country to be followed by the rest, where the criminal court delivered a verdict in the genocide trail of four Rwandans said to have played a role in the genocide.
Ms Hara said: "The Belgian model established by a 1993 law that gives its courts universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, deserves promotion and encouragement".
The Rwanda tribunal is also limited by its mandate, in that it can only prosecute cries committed in 1994.
Since then, crimes against humanity and war crimes have continued to be committed especially as the conflict continued between RPF soldiers and Hutu extremists in the DRC, necessitating the need for the use of international law in national jurisdictions to ensure these criminals do not escape punishment.
The ICTR must immediately focus on meeting its mandate with the objective of achieving the political relevance of that mandate, i.e. establishing a national reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi communities.
The ICG also asks the UN Security Council to pressure the prosecutor to set deadline for investigations and ask the judges to publish a trial schedule. ( (
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