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Rwanda: Former Minister Pokes at UN Tribunal on RPF Prosecutions
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
26 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
Kigali
A former Minister in Rwanda who disappeared with thousands of dollars of government money says the UN Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) has avoided prosecuting some people yet it has the mandate, RNA reports.
Writing on behalf of Paris-based group Action for Impartial International Justice for Rwanda (AJIIR) to the UN Security Council, Ambassador Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana says the ICTR must not be allowed to end its activities before it prosecutes officers of the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front.
The court was ordered by the UN Security Council to wind up all its first instance cases by December 2008 and rap up the appeals by 2010.
In the March 20 letter, the former Foreign Minister in the first government just after the 1994 Genocide details what his group claims are crimes that the RPF committed but is yet to answer for them.
The document makes reference to controversial investigations such as that of French Judge Jean Louis Brugiuere against 9 senior army officers and the recent indictments against 40 officers by Spanish Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles.
The letter to the Chief Prosecutor of the court Hassan Bubacar Jallow is copied to all the current 5 permanent members of the UN Security, the UN Secretary General and the US Secretary of State. International campaign groups are also notified.
It is however not the first such correspondence by critics of the establishment in Kigali accusing the ICTR of 'victors' justice'. They have argued that only members of the former government have been brought to book for their past in Rwanda.
In October, 1994, Ambassador Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana abandoned the Rwandan delegation to the UN General Assembly headed by former President Pasteur Bizimungu. The Prime Minister at the time Faustin Twagiramungu called the case an enigma.
Mr. Ndagijimana disappeared in New York with $187,000 (about Rwf. 100 million) in cash he had carried along to finance the Rwanda's embassy in Washington and United Nations mission.
Rwanda owns a house at 124 East 39th Street in Manhattan that housed its small United Nations mission and the Rwandan consulate. The mission had been reported to be strapped for money, The New York Times reported then.
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Even after he had been appointed Minister in the transitional government, Mr. Ndagijimana's family remained in Paris where he had been previously Ambassador. He has been living their since he surfaced after sometime.
In situations when such individuals have come up to poke at officials, they have been described here as people who have run away from Rwanda from largely cases of corruption and embezzlement.
Former Premier Pierre-Célestin Rwigema was forced to resign after he was named in multiple cases of corruption. He later fled to the United States and become a vocal critic of government.
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