Arusha — Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the former Rwandan minister of family and women affairs, is the first woman to be indicted for genocide by an international jurisdiction. Accused of inciting rape, since Monday she has been trying, through her lawyer, to convince judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to reclaim "her dignity and humanity".

Her lead counsel, Nicole Bergevin from the Quebec (Canada) Bar Association, began by accusing the press of having orchestrated a campaign to "soil the image" of the former minister.

"The public has already judged this woman who, in the eyes of the media, has lost all human sentiments", fumed Bergevin, turning her bespectacled eyes towards the public gallery filled with journalists and other observers.

She said that her client was "not the minister of rape" as had been said by some media, and she hoped that "the chamber will have the wisdom, courage and openness to go beyond this history written with haste".

Still sharp and full of life for her 59 years, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, her hair neatly tied behind her head, is sitting next to Bergevin. Word has spread among observers that the former minister plans to take the witness stand herself, but there is still nothing definite on whether and when she will testify in defence.

The accused, who is known to while away the hours in her rose garden at the United Nations prison where she is the only female inmate, follows the proceedings closely.

She points out a passage in a court document while whispering to her lawyers, oblivious to the public near her. Bergevin's co-counsel, Guy Poupart, also from Canada, begins examining the first defence witness, a lady who used to work under Nyiramasuhuko.

"Nyiramasuhuko was more of a mother than an authority. She always received her employees without discrimination", said the witness, code-named "WFGS" to keep her identity secret.

"There were some Tutsi officials in the ministry and this did not cause any problems for Nyiramasuhuko", pointed out WFGS, who like the accused, is a native of Butare (southern Rwanda).

She ended her testimony by dismissing allegations by the Prosecutor that a roadblock had been erected in front of Nyiramasuhuko's Butare home in May 1994.

Roadblocks were widely used to sort out people according to their ethnic groups and were scenes of countless massacres. According to Rwandan authorities, over one million people were killed in a period of three months in 1994.

Cross-examination of the witness by the prosecution took place behind closed doors on the orders of the Presiding judge in the trial, William Hussein Sekule of Tanzania.

The next witness was an elderly man in his seventies who lost his Tutsi wife during the genocide. The defence will aim to prove, as has been the strategy of all former members of the interim government on trial, that the administration was powerless in front of the killers.

"Groups of bandits went around killing Tutsis and looting their property. They were joined by deserters from the army", explained witness "WMCZ". "The situation was out of control".

Silvana Arbia, the prosecuting attorney, carried out the cross-examination of the witness, most of it done in-camera, and she has a different view. She has argued that the Interim government, of which Nyiramasuhuko was part, organized and supervised the 1994 massacres.

One of her key pieces of evidence was a diary attributed to the accused in which, besides records of household expenditure, had lists of names of people in different ink. The names had small crosses besides them.

The diary was given as evidence by French sociologist, André Guichaoua, one of the premier western specialists on Rwanda.

The exact number of witnesses who will appear for the former minister and the numbers for her co-accused are still unknown as each defendant seems to have opted to defend themselves individually.

Nyiramasuhuko is being jointly tried with five other persons, among them her son, whom an expert witness labelled as "badly brought up". All have pleaded not guilty of crimes of genocide committed in Butare (South) in1994.