Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
2 August 2007
Kigali — Genocide suspect living in Canada and accused of inciting the massacre of Tutsis has asked to be tried in a Canadian court. Canadian Supreme Court ordered him out of the country in 2005.
Mr. Leon Mugesera, who has fought and delayed his deportation for 12 years, wants Canada to put him on trial for war crimes instead of sending him back to Rwanda, where he says he will be killed.
According to reports from Canada, Mr. Mugesera's family released a statement making the request on Wednesday. His attorney, Guy Bertrand, claims the former university lecturer and Hutu political activist would be killed shortly after landing on Rwandan soil.
"We are convinced he will be executed upon arrival at the airport," Bertrand told the Canadian Press.
"The focus has been on him so much around the world that he wouldn't even get a trial. He should get a trial in Canada."
More than two years ago the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Mr. Mugesera out of their country but Canadian officials are reviewing the security risk Rwanda poses for him.
The Quebec City resident's possible deportation became more likely in the past week after Rwanda abolished the death penalty - a key stumbling block that has kept Canada from sending him home.
But Mr. Bertrand said Mugesera has no chance of a fair trial in Rwanda, even if he somehow avoided death. The lawyer said 22 of Mugesera's family members have been killed in Rwanda since 1994.
Mr. Mugesera was a political foe of Paul Kagame when the current Rwandan president was a rebel leader, Bertrand pointed out.
"He can't defend himself because in Rwanda you can't attack the authorities," Bertrand said. "You cannot defend yourself in conditions like that."
Canada has annually deported about 40 immigrants accused of committing crimes against humanity in other countries since 2000, according to a new federal report examining the Canadian war crimes program.
Canadian officials started to favour deportation over criminal trials after they spent millions on a series of failed prosecutions before 1994, says historian and war crimes expert Pat Brode.
Brode said a 1994 Supreme Court decision made convictions nearly impossible. Deportations became "an unsatisfactory alternative to prosecution," Brode said.
"But deportation is probably the best solution," he said. "At least under the local or international systems of trying war crimes, people understand the local situation."
Mugesera is part of a list that includes a half dozen accused war criminals from the Second World War who have managed to stay in Canada for years despite Ottawa's ongoing efforts to throw them out.
Mugesera is accused of giving a speech in 1992 that encouraged his fellow Hutus to kill Rwandan Tutsis. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were killed two years later.
Mugesera has always maintained the speech was a political response to the invasion of Rwanda by Tutsi rebels who were based in Uganda. Bertrand also said Mugesera had left the country when the massacre began in earnest in 1994.
But the Supreme Court ruled that Mugesera knew his words to thousands of Hutu supporters would lead to violence against Tutsi civilians, who were already being massacred in smaller numbers in 1992.
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