Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)
29 November 2006
Arusha — Investigators working for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have searched and gathered elements of information concerning the attack against the plane of the Rwandan President Juvénal Habiarimana but these inquiries have been interrupted, French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière has confirmed.
According to the magistrate whose investigation was recently released, these elements were gathered in February 1997 by ICTR investigators based in Kigali and working under the authority of Louise Harbour (Canada) who was the prosecutor at that time. A report was communicated in March 2000 to the president of the tribunal, Mrs. Nawanethem Pillay. Several newspapers have made mention of this investigation since then.
Ten days after the release of the French investigation conducted at the request of the families of the plane crew, the current prosecutor of the ICTR - and in theory only prosecutor concerned by the case - has made no statement. The investigation has drawn heated reaction from the incriminated Rwandan authorities. The country has cut off its diplomatic relations with France.
The ICTR's aborted investigation has been led by an Australian magistrate, Mr. Michael Hourrigan who used to be a prosecutor in his country and now works as a lawyer in the United States. According to him, this investigation was interrupted after he had communicated its results to a person in charge of the Security at the United Nations. Mrs. Harbour had summoned him to The Hague and asked him to renounce all contacts with his informants on this issue and blamed him for having led an investigation external to the Tribunal's jurisdiction.
The issue of these limits to the ICTR's jurisdiction, even though the Tribunal has authority under the article 4 of its status to condemn any violation of the Geneva Accords such as terrorism, have been brought up by the spokesperson and deputy registrar of the international tribunal, Mr. Everard O'Donnell. When Bruguière's investigation was published last week, O'Donnell declared that the ICTR is not capacitated to investigate on this particular attack which concerned only « the assassination of one or several individuals ». On April 6th 1994, the Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and his Burundese counterpart died in the attack against the plane they were traveling in. The plane was shot down by a ground-to-air missile as it neared the airport of Kigali.
Several attorneys, whose association O'Donnell has severely criticized, consider since then that the registrar has lost all neutrality. Some of them note that his statement was made during a press conference the Rwandan delegate at the ICTR was attending.
Talking anonymously, several magistrates working at the ICTR call these debates on the extent of the tribunal's jurisdiction « specious ». They talk about the culpability of the United Nations and its secretary general in the face of the Rwandan genocide and how in turn the government in place at the time « made hostage » the ICTR. As proof of this, one of the anonymous magistrates has highlighted that the first judgments of the ICTR for the year 2001 had made mention of a « plane gunned down » whereas the latest judgments refer to a plane which has « fallen down ».
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2006 Hirondelle News Agency. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
