A UN tribunal is Ignoring genocide in Rwanda

I've ranted and raved a bit about the Harris County Criminal Justice system. Now, it's time for a little ranting on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.


The tribunal's leadership says it is trying to end impunity for war criminals. But it has delivered impunity to the victors in a civil war even though it has substantial evidence of serious war crimes by the victorious army.


The tribunal's prosecutors have evidence of 500,000 murders and it is doing nothing to prosecute the perpetrators. Instead, it is engaged in a bit of butt kissing with the leaders of the murderous army.


The tribunal was set up by the United Nations Security Council in 1994 to try persons charged with war crimes in the genocide in that Central African nation. The country was and still is divided into two basic ethnic groups -- Hutus and Tutsis.


The Hutus make up about 85 percent of the population and ruled the country before the 1994 genocide. Minority Tutsis, generally children of Tutsis who left the country for Uganda in the early 1960s, invaded the country in 1990 and defeated the government army and took power in July 1994.


Most of the world's attention has been focused on the massacres of Tutsis from the time the president's plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, until the government went into exile in mid-July. And, it was terrible. Somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsis were murdered.


So, the tribunal has indicted what it calls the leaders of the genocide. One of the defendants is my client, Prosper Mugiraneza, the former minister of civil service.


While I think Prosper is innocent, I can't complain about trials of the Hutu leadership if there is evidence of their guilt.


But, I'm shocked and amazed that the tribunal is simply ignoring as many as a half-million murders of Hutus by Tutsis during the war. It's just wrong.


A lot of defense types at the ICTR, some expert witnesses for the prosecution and exiled Hutus have complained for years that the the tribunal is delivering victor's justice, that is, just prosecuting the Hutus while ignoring crimes by the Tutsis. One expert witness for the prosecution in many trials, a Belgian professor named Filip Rentjens, has flatly refused to testify for the prosecution again until at least one Tutsi is indicted. Another, the late Allison des Forges, has testified and written that approximately 40,000 Hutus were killed by Tutsis.


But, des Forges was off by a factor of 10, according to some evidence gathered and suppressed by the tribunal's prosecutors. A couple of years ago, prosecution witness was interviewing a Tutsi who knew about the actions of the Rwandan Popular Front army, the main Tutsi political group and the eventual victors in the civil war. He asked how many Hutus were killed by the RPF army and thought the answer was mistranslated. So, he wrote down the number he thought was right, 50,000. The witness said, no, then added an extra zero, making it 500,000 dead.

A half million dead people and the prosecutors at the UN tribunal haven't even said that it is tacky conduct. Why?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Kagame government in Rwanda is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US government. And, the US writes the biggest checks to the UN. So, part of it is the golden rule, he that has the gold rules.

A second reason is the tribunal's completion strategy. The Tribunal with a $130 million plus annual budget is a money pit for the UN. All to try about 70 defendants -- all Hutus -- since 1994. The tribunal has promised the UN Security Council it will finish all trials by the end of 2010 and nothing is going to stand in the way. Indict some Tutsi officials and the completion strategy goes down the tube.

Most important is that the tribunal is scared to death of crossing the Rwandan government. Most of the witnesses come from Rwanda and the government can turn off the flow of witnesses like a tap. And, the tribunal knows it can because it has at least once in the past.
That was the case of Jean-Basco Barayagwiza. He was an official in the former government's foreign ministry charged with inciting the genocide.

In 1999, the tribunal's appeals chamber ruled unanimously that the charges against Baraygwiza should be dismissed due to violations of his rights after he was arrested.

The Rwandan government went nuts. It cut off cooperation with the tribunal. The tribunal almost instantly ground to a halt.

So what happened? The prosecutor s filed a b.s. motion to reconsider. Four months after its initial decision, the appeals chamber reversed itself in a decision that ranks with Bush v. Gore for intellectual honesty. Instead of releasing Baraygawiza, the appeals chamber ordered that if acquitted he be given cash compensation and it convicted, his sentence be reduced to account for the violations of his rights.

In 2003, Baraygawiza was convicted. His two co-defendants got life. But, to give credit for the violation of his rights, Baraygawiza -- who was then 53 years old -- was sentenced to "only" 35 years in prison. Given the credit on his sentence for time served, he would have only been 80 years old when he completed his sentence.

On appeal, his sentence was reduced to 33 years. So, he can look forward to being released when he's 78.

If the Rwandan government is willing to cut off the tribunal for releasing a single defendant like Baraygawiza, what would it do it the tribunal indicted the president of Rwanda and his top military and political subordinates? It would go mad. You can bet the tribunal's office in Rwanda would be closed and the staff there run out of town on a rail. As for witnesses in the trials in progress. When pigs fly.

This isn't to say that the judges on the tribunal always cave in to pressure from the Rwandan government. To the contrary, the tribunal has acquitted six defendants including cabinet ministers and senior military leaders of the former government. I expect more acquittals. For instance, I truly believe my client has a shot at being acquitted.

And, the judges have shown the spine to refuse to transfer defendants to Rwanda for trial due to worries about the Rwandan judicial system. The Rwandan government screamed like stuck pigs when that happened but the tribunal's judiciary commendably stuck to its guns.

But, the powers that be such as the prosecutor and the top administrator, aren't about to get the Rwandan government mad at them.

So, the long and the short of it is that the tribunal likely will do half of its job to end impunity for mass murders. It ended impunity for those who lose.

As for the winners, well, what the heck. It was only a half-million Hutus killed. There are lots of Hutus in Rwanda and a few more or less won't make any difference.