10 April 2002
On Monday the training began of almost 255,000 judges who will preside in Rwanda's gacaca courts - a form of popular or traditional justice for those accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide. All but the highest category of genocide crimes will be judged by these courts.
A total of 781 gacaca instructors were trained between 4 February and 14 March, all of them magistrates or final year law students, Hirondelle reported. The trainees are known as "les integres", as they were chosen by their own communities as being people with integrity.
Since 1996, Rwandan law has divided genocide suspects into four categories, who will be judged at four administrative levels by the gacaca courts, according to Hirondelle. Category four consists of those accused of looting or destroying victims' property during the genocide; category three of those defined as "the person who has committed or became accomplice of serious attacks without the intention of causing death to victims"; category two of those accused of killing; and category one of those accused of rape and other sexual torture.
Neither accused nor victim has the right to counsel, nor has the accused any right to appeal against the categorisation of his or her crime, a designation with great consequences in relation to possible punishments. Those assigned to category one will be sentenced to death if found guilty.
Addressing journalists on 6 April in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, President Paul Kagame said the death penalty was an issue Rwanda would have to address in the future. He said that whenever it was addressed "it will have difficulties".
He said the issue had been raised some time back, but had been dropped, with some Rwandans questioning whether it was appropriate to debate the issue at a time when the country was considering the cases of mass murderers. Others, he acknowledged, said it was the best time to debate the issue as it could contribute to reconciliation. "These are the two sides of the coin, and we must see what we can make of them," Kagame said.
He said some people were even sceptical about the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda because of its inability to impose the death penalty. "They questioned how the court dealing with the worst possible crimes against humanity could give the masterminds of the crimes not only the luxury of not having to face the death penalty but also for them to be held in relatively comfortable conditions."
Referring to the gacaca courts, he said Rwanda was "involved in a sort of balancing act". He said if Rwanda waited for every single one of the 120,000 detainees to go through the classical court procedures, "it might take 400 years to go through all the cases".
"The other choice is for us to be innovative and build on gacaca. It might not be the most perfect process, but we can keep plugging the loopholes over time to ensure that it delivers the best possible results in the circumstances. It is a choice we have made."
The gacaca training process would last six weeks, with each group receiving two days of training in basic principles of law (especially in relation to the January 2001 gacaca law), group management, conflict resolution, judicial ethics, trauma, human resources, and equipment and financial management, Hirondelle reported.
Following this, lists of victims and suspects would be drawn up, and 12 pilot trials would be organised. The trials would then be extended so that every part of the country would have begun within two months of the pilot trials, Hirondelle said. The official budget for the gacaca system is about US $13 million.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated in its 2002 world report for Rwanda that efforts had been made throughout the year to deal with the thousands of detainees who had no specific charges against them, and who had spent up to seven years in prison. Prosecutors had continued the practice begun in 2000 of bringing these people before their home communities to ask for testimonies against them, in the absence of which the persons were provisionally freed. Hundreds had been set free in this way, HRW said.
The authorities had also encouraged detainees to confess in a "plea-bargaining procedure", which was meant to shorten trials, "but seemed unlikely to speed [up] proceedings greatly" because prosecutors had to establish the validity of each confession. Towards the end of 2001, over 15,000 such confessions awaited examination, HRW reported.
As of March 2001, 5,310 people had been tried on genocide charges in the formal courts system, with 17 percent of them acquitted. Fewer people had been sentenced to death in 2000 than in previous years: from 1996 to 1999 over 30 percent of those found guilty were given the death sentence, but in 2000 only 8.5 percent received the same penalty, and no one was executed, HRW said.
Despite the prevalence of rape during the genocide, few accused had been tried on this charge, "in part because the predominantly male judicial personnel showed little concern for such prosecutions, in part because victims hesitated to come forward".
The issue of minors in detention remained a pressing one: thousands of detainees aged between 14 and 18 at the time of their alleged crimes remained in detention throughout 2001, HRW reported. Although supposed to benefit from priority in processing their cases, most had not. Others who were tried, acquitted and released were later rearrested after public protests against the verdicts, it said.
Three judges arrested in 2000 on charges of genocide remained in jail in 2001. Two had served on panels which had acquitted individuals in well-publicised cases, prior to their own arrests. HRW reported that the Rwandan authorities had recognised corruption in the judiciary as being "widespread and serious", and had called on judicial personnel to reform. Both prosecutors and judges were accused of accepting bribes in 2001, either to free the accused or to assure their conviction, regardless of guilt.
In March 2001, the Rwandan attorney-general issued a revised list of genocide suspects, or those charged with the worst crimes, HRW said. About 800 people had been added to the previous list, issued in 1999, bringing the total to nearly 2,900.
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