Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
31 March 2008
Kigali — The 'Hotel Rwanda' film personality is scheduled to testify this week in the ongoing trail of Rwandan Genocide fugitives in Britain who are awaiting extradition to Rwanda, RNA reports.
The four men are fighting their extradition to Rwanda on grounds that they may not have a fair trail. Human rights campaigners have also called on the British legal system to carry out the trails. The men have been in detention since January last year.
Among the men includes Mr. Vincent Bajinya, 47, a medical doctor who changed his names to Vincent Brown since securing asylum in Britain and worked for a refugee charity in there.
Mr. Charles Munyaneza, 50, had been a local mayor in Rwanda and was alleged to have planned "tens of thousands of killings" of Tutsi, but was working as a cleaner in Britain before his arrest.
A third man, Celestin Ugirashebuja, 55, the former mayor of Kigoma in Kigali rural, "organized roadblocks in the commune to prevent the escape of Tutsis and again is responsible for many thousands of Tutsi lives," according to the legal team arguing for Rwanda.
Another, Mr. Emmanuel Nteziryayo, a former local mayor, appeared at a separate hearing of the same court after being arrested in Manchester, in northwest England.
Mr. Paul Rusesabagina will on Thursday tell Westminster magistrates in London that four accused men will not face a fair trial in Rwanda, The Independent reported yesterday.
"The evidence I will give will be about the human rights situation in Rwanda. There are men who have been held in prison for 14 years without trial. When you are in prison in Rwanda it is up to your family to look after you", Rusesabagina told The Independent.
"In the name of genocide everything is possible, and the government is able to lock up its potential or actual political opponents."
Mr. Frank Brazell, the solicitor for one of the accused men, Vincent Brown, told the British daily that his client believed the charges against him were politically motivated.
"Mr. Brown protests his innocence and has evidence in support of that. We are very concerned that he will not have a fair trial in Rwanda," he said.
Mr. Rusesabagina is the man whose story was immortalised in the film 'Hotel Rwanda'. Mr. Rusesabagina was credited with saving up to 1,200 lives during the outbreak of violence in 1994 in which more than a million people died.
The story goes that, as manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines Kigali, he used his contacts to save Hutus and Tutsis. He has since become an outspoken critic of the government in Rwanda and now lives in Belgium.
The arrests and the trail came after a special agreement was signed between Britain and Rwanda allowing them to be extradited. They cannot be tried in Britain as courts there do not have jurisdiction over acts of Genocide and crimes against humanity committed by foreign nationals outside the country.
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