Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)
27 April 2006
Arusha — Barely days after the Rwandan government had sent a harsh missive to a defence lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the tribunal has gone against tradition and strongly rebuked the same lawyer.
In a press release made public on Wednesday, the spokesperson of the ICTR Tim Gallimore said that an open letter by Professor Peter Erlinder, lead counsel for Major Aloys Ntabakuze who is on trial for genocide, did not express the views of the tribunal.
Erlinder had on April 6 2006 written to the Canadian prime minister labelling Rwandan president Paul Kagame a "war criminal" and requesting that he be refused entry into Canada.
Erlinder had alleged that Kagame had sparked off the 1994 genocide in Rwanda by shooting down a plane carrying former president Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. He had also threatened to file a motion at the tribunal to have the Rwandan president indicted for war crimes.
"The letter is not a communication from, or on behalf of, the tribunal. The ICTR formally and officially disassociates itself from the views expressed in the letter", said Gallimore. "The professor is hired to defend his client, not to file motions unrelated to his case"
He continued that the office of the Prosecutor of the ICTR was "evaluating" allegations of human rights abuses by Kagame's Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA, former rebels now in power in Kigali).
"When his office determines there is credible evidence of those allegations, he will issue indictments", said the spokesperson adding that Erlinder's open letter raised "many political issues".
"The ICTR prosecutor issues indictments on evidence of criminal actions within the jurisdictions of the tribunal - not on political charges, military 'winners' or ethnic identity", went on the release.
Erlinder had come under fire from the Rwandan representative to the ICTR, Aloys Mutabingwa who accused the American lawyer of being a "mouthpiece" of various individuals and organisations who "distort" facts about the 1994 genocide. As well as denying the genocide.
Mutabingwa had added that Erlinder's letter "denies, minimises, justifies" the 1994 genocide and that it "attempts to portray a negative image of the Rwandan president".
Major Aloys Ntabakuze was the commander of the elite Kanombe Para-commando battalion in Kigali and he is jointly tried with three other senior army officers of the former Rwandan army. Among them is the so-called "mastermind" of the genocide, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora.
Their trial opened in April 2002.
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