They say the U.S. should go beyond applauding the recent conviction of two former Rwandan leaders, and condemn the ‘shocking’ acquittals and ‘overly’ lenient sentences that the Arusha-based tribunal has rendered in the recent past.

The U.S., on Tuesday, said the ICTR had taken a big step to providing justice for Rwandans, when it jailed for life the president and vice president of the party that supervised the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

On December 21, the tribunal handed life sentence to Matthieu Ngirumpatse, former MRND president and his vice, Edouard Karemera, for genocide crimes committed in 1994.

Nonetheless, Dr. Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, the president of IBUKA, the umbrella organisation of genocide survivors’ associations, Wednesday told The New Times that there seems to be some conspiracy, especially when some of the convicts get lesser sentences than they deserve.

Mid this month, Col. Théoneste Bagosora, a key architect of the genocide, had his earlier sentence reduced from life to 35 years in prison, while Lt Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva, a former influential military commander, had a life sentence commuted to 15 years, and effectively won back his freedom as he had spent the same period in detention.

“Our main concern is that no one can alter the decisions of the court. There is nothing that the U.S. government can do to change the court’s decision,” Dusingizemungu said.  “Praising the court rulings is ok, but it’s not enough; instead, they [U.S.] should put pressure on the court so that it does a better job because it is clear that it has a serious weakness.  The international community needs to ensure that the remaining cases are tried properly.”

In a statement released by U.S. State Department, deputy spokesperson, Mark Toner, welcomed the MRND leaders’ ruling as “an important step in providing justice and accountability for the Rwandan people and the international community”.

“The defendants were among the leadership of the dominant party in the interim government, the same party that established the Interahamwe militia, which played a leading role in the 1994 genocide,” he said.

Source: AllAfrica.com

The new date was declared following a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame.  The closure of gacaca courts was first announced in 2007 but has been postponed several times due to what officials describe as the complexity of certain cases and the discovery of new facts.

Gacaca trials began in 2005 in 106 pilot jurisdictions and were then extended to the rest of the country.  They have now judged some 1.5 million people, according to the Rwandan government.

Gacaca courts have the competence to try all genocide suspects except top planners at national and prefectural levels.  They can impose sentences of up to life imprisonment which is now the maximum sentence in Rwanda.

Gacaca judges are volunteers and are not professional lawyers but rather people elected by their communities on the basis of integrity.  Some have, however, themselves been accused of genocide, subsequently tried and convicted or acquitted.

Judges convicted Ngirumpatse and Karemera, who were respectively President and Vice-President of the former ruling party MRND, of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.  Those crimes include rape and sexual violence perpetrated throughout the country.  The Chamber concluded that rape and sexual violence constituted acts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

“Having considered the gravity of the crimes for which Karemera has been convicted, as well as all the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the Chamber unanimously sentences Edouard Karemera to life imprisonment,” presiding Judge Denis Byron pronounced, repeating the same words for Matthieu Ngirumpatse.

On April 11 and 12, 1994, the Chamber noted, the accused met with senior officials of the interim government at Hôtel des Diplomates, where weapons were distributed to the Interahamwe militia, and from that date the joint criminal enterprise began to incorporate government officials, politicians, Interahamwe leaders and influential businessmen.

According to the judgment, Karemera and Ngirumpatse had authority and effective control over Interahamwe, who participated in attacks on Tutsi civilians throughout the genocide, and failed to punish them.  They also had authority over personnel such as Colonel Théoneste Bagosora in ministries controlled by the MRND, such as the Ministry of Defence, the court said.

The Chamber found that the two convicts conspired with the interim government to adopt a policy of genocide, which they executed primarily through their Civil Defence Plan, a thinly veiled strategy for extermination of Tutsis.

Furthermore, it said that as of May 25, 1994, Karemera had authority and effective control over civilians who participated in the Civil Defence Programme and local officials who were part of the territorial administration.

“Keremera and Ngirumpatse failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent their subordinates from further killing Tutsis and to punish them for committing these further killings.  Consequently, hundreds of thousands of unarmed men, women and children were killed as a direct result of policies of the Interim Government,” the judge said.

According to the Chamber, the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that Tutsi women and girls were raped, mutilated and sexually assaulted by Interahamwe, other militias, soldiers and civilians on a large scale in various places in Rwanda, as part of a widespread and systematic attack that intended to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group.

The judges noted that the accused took no action to prevent Interahamwe from raping or to punish the perpetrators.

“Accordingly, the Chamber finds that Karemera and Ngirumpatse are liable for the rapes and sexual assaults against Tutsi women and girls,” the judges ruled.

Ngirumpatse was born in 1939 in Ntare commune, Kigali Rural prefecture, and trained as a lawyer.  He was President of the MRND party in 1994 and had been a member of its steering committee since 1993.   Ngirumpatse was arrested in Mali on June 11, 1998, and transferred to the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania, a month later.

Karemera was born in Mwendo commune, Kibuye prefecture, in 1951 and also trained as a lawyer.  Like his co-accused, he held various senior positions, including Minister of Interior in the interim government in place during the genocide.  He was arrested in Togo on June 5, 1998 and transferred to the UN Tribunal on July 10, 1998.

Their trial began in November 2003.  The prosecution fielded 46 witnesses, of whom 30 appeared in court and 16 gave written evidence.  The defence called a total of 74 witnesses; 35 for Karemera and 39 for Ngirumpatse, including the defendants themselves.

Throughout their defence, Karemera and Ngirumpatse strongly denied that either they or their MRND party had the power to control the Interahamwe militia.

“Mr Gbagbo allegedly bears individual criminal responsibility, as indirect co-perpetrator, for four counts of crimes against humanity, namely murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution and other inhuman acts, allegedly committed in the territory of Côte d’Ivoire between 16 December 2010 and 12 April 2011,” the ICC said in a statement.

He is the first former head of state to be tried by the ICC since its inception in 2002.

Laurent Gbagbo is slated to appear before the judges for a preliminary hearing in the coming days.  His lawyer before the ICC, Emmanuel Altit, intends to denounce during that hearing that his arrest and detention in the north of Côte d’Ivoire were illegal.

This transfer takes place less than two weeks before Côte d’Ivoire parliamentary elections set for December 11.  It followed a discreet meeting, last week in Paris, of Luis Moreno and President of Côte d’Ivoire Alassane Ouattara.

Answering to those who fear that the ICC could have been manipulated, Ivorian regime’s lawyer before the ICC, Jean-Paul Benoît, told Hirondelle News Agency on the phone that “there is no doubt that the election date makes the case highly sensitive (…)  However, the ICC is jealous of its independence and the Ivorian government is not dictating the proceedings”.

Some 40 family members and friends lamented the court’s decision.  Basebya’s lawyers had argued that the 64-year-old’s 18 months of pre-trial detention violated her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (article 5).

This was the sixth pre-trial hearing since Yvonne Basebya was arrested in June 2010.  Thursday’s hearing followed a visit of a rogatory commission and Dutch police investigators to Kigali last week.  Additional witnesses in the case are scheduled to be heard in Kigali in December.

Yvonne Ntacyobatabara Basebya is said to have led a group of Impuzamugambi and Interahamwe militias who killed Tutsis in Gikondo (Kigali) in 1994.  She faces charges of genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, murder and war crimes.

The investigation into the role of Yvonne’s husband, Augustin Basebya, who had been an investigator in Juvenal Kajelijeli’s defence team at the ICTR, led to Yvonne.  There was not enough evidence to pursue Augustin Basebya, who was sitting in the public gallery on Thursday.

Dutch prosecutors claim that Yvonne  Ntacyobatabara was a high ranking member of the extremist political party CDR.  She is alleged to have had an influential position in Gikondo, where she allegedly incited hatred and violence (murder and rape) against Tutsis.

Ntacyobatabara Basebya’s lawyer, Victor Koppe, said the case was very weak.  Among others, he argued that there were no records that she was a high ranking figure in the CDR.  Instead, Koppe claimed that Ntacyobatabara Basebya saved several Tutsis during the 1994 massacres in Gikondo.  In two weeks from now, the defense team will hear former Mille Collines Hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina as a witness in the case.

Evidence against Ntacyobatabara Basebya includes documents discovered during her residence search, telephone records, witness testimony and her gacaca file.  She was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia by a gacaca court in Gikondo in 2007.  Dutch investigations into her case have been going on for four years.

The case against Ntacyobatabara Basebya is the second Rwanda case in the Netherlands.  In July, the Hague Appeals Court sentenced Joseph Mpambara to life imprisonment for war crimes committed in Mogonero.

Being a foreigner, Mpambara could not be tried for genocide, since the man lived here as an asylum seeker without a Dutch passport. Yvonne, however received a Dutch passport in 2004 (she has been living in the Netherlands since 1998) and can therefore be tried for crimes of genocide, the first such case since the Netherlands ratified the Genocide Convention in 1966.

At present, the Netherlands has sufficient jurisdiction to prosecute foreigners suspected of international crimes, including genocide.  But that law applies only to crimes committed after 1 October 2003.  For older cases, the Dutch Genocide Convention Implementation Act applies, whose jurisdiction is limited.  Dutch parliament approved, last week, a bill that will extend the possibility of detecting and prosecuting genocide.  The bill – which will now go to the Senate – allows the Netherlands to better address genocide and war crimes suspects retroactively and to work closer with international criminal courts, including the ICTR and ICC.

Correspondingly, in “Dutch genocide case takes shape,” Thijs Bouwknegt of Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports:

“We expect to present our final report before that date,” Denis Bikesha, spokesperson for the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions (NSGJ), told Hirondelle News Agency on Thursday.  Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said in May that the report would be ready in December 2011 and that “this chapter of gacaca will be officially declared closed”.

Bikesha told Hirondelle that the 22 remaining cases mostly concern people who were convicted in absentia and who have reopened their cases  recently upon returning to Rwanda.

Rwandan law provides for people convicted in absentia to request a new trial if they present themselves.

Bikesha said residual mechanisms currently being set up would decide how to handle cases presented after December.

The closure of the gacaca courts was first announced for 2007 but has been postponed several times.  The NSGJ says the reason was the complexity of certain cases and the discovery of new facts.

Gacaca trials began in 2005 in 106 pilot jurisdictions and were then extended to the rest of the country.  They have now judged some 1.5 million people, according to the Rwandan government.

Gacaca courts have the competence to try all genocide suspects except top planners at national and prefectural level.  They can impose sentences of up to life imprisonment which is now the maximum sentence in Rwanda.

Gacaca judges are volunteers and are not professional lawyers but rather people elected by their communities on the basis of integrity.  Some have, however, themselves been accused of genocide, subsequently tried and convicted or acquitted.  Some have also been caught at corruption.

The Premier made the remarks while appearing before the Senate to answer questions related to what had been accomplished to ensure the welfare of survivors, especially in providing them with decent housing.

FARG was established in 1998 to improve the welfare of genocide survivors by providing them with basic needs like shelter, healthcare, education and guidance towards self-sustainability.

“So far, about Rwf 78.1 billion has been spent on education while Rwf 7.7 billion was spent on the health of survivors,” said the Premier.

He added that Rwf 15.9 billion was spent on shelter while Rwf 9 billion went towards helping them start income-generating activities.

Part of what the Senate had requested of the Prime Minister included providing the actual number of survivors who have benefited from the fund.

According to Makuza, a database was created and in January 2010, a census of genocide survivors benefiting from several initiatives was also conducted.  “Figures collected indicate that 38,679 houses were constructed out of the 40,187 houses needed,” the Prime Minister said.  Of the constructed houses, 12,908 need to be renovated.

The head of government told the Senate that 876 beneficiaries sold their houses, while 144 are illegal beneficiaries.  “Indeed there was mismanagement of FARG funds, but after creating this database, we came up with strict measures to ensure that no more errors were made,” said the Premier.  He added that mismanagement led to several reshuffles of the fund’s management, and FARG activities decentralised to ensure efficiency and proper accountability.

The Prime Minister also unveiled a list of 21 entrepreneurs who misused or embezzled funds meant for the construction of houses of genocide survivors.  Among them was Védaste Ngarambe of KCC enterprise and Lambert Byemayire of SEGH enterprise who are alleged to have squandered approximately Rwf 102 million and Rwf 98.5 million respectively.  All the 21 cases are in high court.

Following the Prime Minister’s presentation, Senator Agnes Kayijire expressed her concerns over lack of support documents on all work that was done.  “There are no clear reports on work done between 2008 and 2009.  There is also a problem in accessing information related to previous work done; I recommend the government to look into this as a measure to ensure efficiency,” she said.

Senator Antoine Mugesera said: “Our main aim was to send a message to the government that there is a problem related to the construction of survivors’ houses.  It is clear that our message was effectively delivered and we expect no further errors in future”.

Several other senators requested that the government ensures proper management of funds meant for genocide survivors and ensure efficiency and proper bookkeeping.

For a link to the original story, click here.

Attempts to provide reparations for survivors have largely failed so far.  Before 2001, Rwandan courts awarded millions of dollars in compensation to thousands of survivors who had brought civil claims against individual perpetrators and the Rwandan Government, which were heard at the same time as domestic genocide prosecutions.

As of today, none of these judgments have been enforced and survivors have yet to receive reparation. Similarly, awards made by local gacaca courts to compensate survivors for material damages were only enforced in a few cases, as perpetrators were indigent, refused to pay or bribed those in charge of the execution of judgments to avoid payment.

After recognising that compensation awards could not only depend on the perpetrator’s ability to pay, in 2001 the Rwandan Government drafted a bill on compensation that sought to establish a compensation fund.  However, this bill was never adopted and no compensation fund was ever created, though a humanitarian fund to support needy survivors has been in operation for some time.

At the international level, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), established by the UN Security Council in November 1994 to try the masterminds of the genocide, doesn’t allow survivors to claim compensation.  Their role before the Tribunal is limited to that of witnesses.

In 2000, the then president of the ICTR, Judge Pillay, urged the Security Council to consider establishing a specialised agency to assist survivors to receive compensation.  According to her, compensation for victims was essential if Rwanda was to recover from the genocidal experience.  However, this was never put in place.

The right to reparation for survivors of the most serious crimes is well established in international human rights and humanitarian law.  Even though it is impossible to fully compensate for crimes such as genocide, compensation is important for survivors as it can serve as an acknowledgment of the crimes that were committed and allow survivors to move on with their lives in dignity.

In their response to the genocide, the Rwandan Government and the international community have prioritised until now the large task of bringing genocide suspects to justice.  As part of their efforts, 1.5 million perpetrators have been convicted in Rwanda so far, according to the Rwandan Government, and a further 38 by the ICTR in Arusha.  Less vigour has been applied to find avenues for reparation.

The Rwandan Government has stated that it simply lacks the means to afford reparation.  It has also emphasised that it already contributes 6% of its budget to the national FARG fund.  The Fonds National pour L’Assistance aux Rescapés du Génocide provides critical education, health and housing assistance to those survivors most in need, yet the vast majority of survivors do not qualify for the funds.

Survivors participating in the conference in Kigali said that they believed the Government of Rwanda should be responsible for establishing a compensation fund.  They also thought that resources of the fund could come from the state budget as well as contributions from third countries, the international community, and assets of convicted perpetrators.

Survivors also expressed their fear that with the closure of the gacaca courts this December their right to reparation will be ignored forever.  Then, genocide cases will be prosecuted before ordinary courts, and it is still unclear what impact this will have on survivors’ right to claim for compensation.

The fact that the government is drafting legislation to establish a mechanism that will handle issues that have not been addressed by the gacaca courts offers an opportunity to include at last a clear provision for compensation.  These efforts should be encouraged as without adequate reparation, accountability efforts run the risk of being meaningless to survivors.

For a link to the original article, click here.

GACACA SERVICE SAYS 54 CASES STILL PENDING

Arusha, August 10, 2011 (FH) – Rwanda’s semi-traditional gacaca courts have 54 genocide related cases left to complete before winding up their activities in December this year, according to the Executive Secretary of Gacaca services.  Some of these include appeals.

Domitille Mukantaganzwa told a news conference in Kigali on Tuesday that her services would do everything possible to conclude the remaining cases in the next two months, according to Wednesday’s edition of the New Times newspaper.

“We should have completed all the cases but we were challenged by the new cases that were brought about by the Rwandan refugees from DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) who voluntarily returned home recently,’’ the New Times quotes her as saying.

Mukantaganzwa said delays had also been caused by “some suspects who take their time”, intentionally delaying proceedings.  “Sometimes they claim that their eyewitnesses are not around and the courts should wait for them to return,” she added.

Gacaca are semi-traditional courts introduced to deal with the backlog of over a million cases involving persons suspected of taking part in the 1994 genocide.

Mukantaganzwa said the final overall report on gacaca courts would be made public before the end of the year and would contain “achievements, challenges and recommendations”, according to the New Times.

After several postponements, Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama announced in May that gacaca would be officially closed in December 2011.  He said the courts had tried over a million people, “a great achievement that would otherwise have been impossible”.

Also in May, the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch released a 144-page report entitled “Justice compromised: the legacy of Rwanda’s community-based gacaca courts”.  It said the legacy of gacaca was mixed and included fair trial violations.

“You were at the forefront during the attack on the Seventh Day Adventist Complex. You and others shot these people, and attacked them with machetes, clubs and other weapons. Many hundreds of victims were massacred and wounded. “

Presiding judge Raoul Dekkers told Mpambara that he had acted in a “genocidal pattern”. Tutsi civilians were attacked in Muganero, in western Rwanda. The only possible punishment is life, the judge and his two colleagues decided.

The 43-year-old Rwandan was also convicted of an attack on an ambulance containing fleeing Tutsis. Two women and their children were so violently beaten with sticks and machetes that they later died. He was also found guilty of threatening of a German doctor and his Tutsi wife.

The court, however, found him not guilty of two counts of rape.

The court considered the facts of the case to be among the most serious crimes judged by a Dutch Criminal Court since the Second World War, and that the sentence for such crimes must send a signal of deterrence.

Appeal
In 2009 Mpambara was first sentenced by a court in The Hague to 20 years in jail for torturing the people in the ambulance, the German doctor, his wife and their newborn baby. At that time he was acquitted of the massacre at the church and of war crimes. The judges also found that Mpambara’s actions were not linked to attacks by the army or rebels in 1994.

The appeal court ruled differently on Thursday. The background of the genocide and civil war (1990-1994) was everywhere, the court ruled. Mpambara’s crimes were an inextricable part of that.

Not guilty plea
Mpambara denied all charges. He claimed that in 1994 he didn’t even know about the killings in his village, Mugonero. The judges said he must have known something: in his immediate surroundings about 60,000 people were killed. His brother, Obed Rizundana, visited Joseph during the genocide. He is now serving a prison sentence of 25 years in Mali. He was convicted in 2001 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

“You were the only one in Rwanda who didn’t know that a genocide had taken place,” Judge Dekkers told Mpambara. “The court finds your story totally unbelievable.” Mpambara looked ahead stoically, his hand under his chin.

Victims
Blood was being spilt in Rwanda’s thousand hills. On 27 April 1994 Jacqueline decided to flee with her son Friedrich and her friend Wolfgang Blam. They left the hospital by car, but were stopped by a Hutu militia in Mugonero.

To the anger of the Interahamwe [a Hutu paramilitary organisation] Jacqueline had destroyed her ID card that said “Tutsi”. In 1994 that meant a death sentence. The men decided to refer the situation to Joseph, the son of a wealthy shopkeeper in Mugonero, and drove to his shop. On the way, militias – armed with machetes and clubs – called the Tutsis “cockroaches” and said that all “must die.”

Wolfgang Blam was a German doctor, and the shopkeeper said that if he died, there would be difficulties with Germany. Joseph decided that Jacqueline should not continue her journey. She was insulted, humiliated, and it was discussed how she would be killed and how her two month old son also had to die because his mother was a Tutsi.

After intervention by the mayor, the couple was allowed to leave. They are still traumatized. Dr Blam and his wife were both awarded compensation of 680.67 euros by the Dutch courts.

Adrien Harorimana also travelled to The Hague. He had witnessed his niece Consolata being raped and murdered in front of Joseph. “I’ve heard that in the Netherlands one witness is not enough,” he told the appeal judges.

“It is regrettable that I’m the only one who saw it, and that makes me sad.” He asked the judges “to find someone who can confirm his story.” The prosecution didn’t, however, and the the judges failed to receive sufficient corroborating evidence, so Mpambara was found not guilty of rape by the appeal court.

Criminal proceedings
After wandering around after the genocide in Rwanda, Mpambara arrived at Schiphol in 1998. He had a false passport and told the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) that he had fled Rwanda for fear of reprisals from Tutsi rebels. Moreover, he feared persecution because he had appeared as a defence witness for his brother at the Rwanda Tribunal.

Mpambara didn’t get asylum – quite the reverse. In 2006, he was arrested in Amsterdam.

Source: Radio Netherlands Worldwide