Felly Kimenyi
29 December 2007
Kigali — The judiciary is lobbying stakeholders to have cases under category one of Genocide crimes transferred to Gacaca traditional courts.
This was disclosed on Thursday during the annual national dialogue conference, which brought together various national leaders and Rwandans from the Diaspora.
First category Genocide cases include people classified as masterminds, senior leaders and rapists.
"We want to take this opportunity to seek your opinion on having Gacaca courts trying category one suspects because of the backlog of cases from our classical courts," Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told participants.
Procedurally, Gacaca courts try suspects in category two and three while those in the first category are tried by classical courts.
Over 7,000 cases have been forwarded to conventional courts from Gacaca courts. Another 1,200 were already before classical courts before Gacaca courts commenced.
"We cannot wait for all these cases to be completed; it would take ages for justice to be realised because of the kind of work that is involved," Karugarama said.
He suggested that the conventional courts handle only cases that are expected to be transferred from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and others that may be sent from national jurisdictions.
The Chief Justice Aloysia Cyanzayire said that there is an urgent need to solve the backlog of cases and the only solution is to transfer the first category Genocide cases to Gacaca courts.
"In classical courts, a lot of logistics are needed for instance transport for witnesses which may not be needed in Gacaca since all witnesses are found in the neighborhood," she said.
However, Senator Odette Nyiramirimo said that the category one cases cannot be handled by Gacaca system since most of them involve technical knowledge giving an example of rape cases where people may need privacy.
"Instead there should be specialised chambers put in place to do this work," she said.
But Cyanzayire said that there is lack of personnel to run such chambers "besides, it is allowed for a Gacaca session to be held in camera; so when privacy is required, it can be granted."
During an interview, Karugarama said that they are going to draft a bill on the transfer of category one Genocide cases from conventional court system to Gacaca jurisdictions.
The bill would be presented to cabinet for approval.
Gacaca courts, which were originally expected to end with this year, have so far handled over one million cases.
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