Following events last week at the ICTR, it is a fair assessment to say the Arusha based UN court is yet to fulfill its objectives but it has performed admirably in the drama department.

To introduce the background to that statement is the case involving Leonidas Nshogoza, a Rwandan lawyer formerly working at the ICTR.

Nshogoza was arrested in January 2008 at the ICTR in Arusha. He was charged with Contempt of court and attempt to Commit Acts Punishable as Contempt of the Tribunal.

Prior to his arrest at the ICTR, Nshogoza had been released by a Gitarama court in June 2007 for having allegedly tried to influence a witness, it is believed that after working in the defense team of a Rwandan military chaplain Emmanuel Rukundo, Nshogoza acquired some soldier skills on top of the lawyers, he administered both to one witness appearing against his client. As a result, Rwandan authorities alert to such antics arrested the lawyer cum hustler.

Nshogoza was arrested on 16 June in Gitarama, in central Rwanda by Kigali authorities, who later released him until he showed up in Arusha where he handed himself to the UN court!

After his arrest in February upon his own surrender to the court, Allison Turner a French lawyer was assigned to defend Nshogoza, the case began in May 2008.

As it goes, all the suspects held by the ICTR are considered indigent which means that they are very poor and therefore the court pays for the costs of their trials.

The Registry of the ICTR is the sole organ of the court which handles all matters finance and administration. So when Turner signed on for Nshogoza, her pay was supposed to be funded by the registrar’s officer.

However, particular financial disagreements between the French lawyer and the office of the registry led to the court hiring another lawyer to defend Nshogoza, this change was inspired by contractual terms between Turner and the court involving the sum of 50,000 US dollars.

When Nshogoza was escorted into court chambers on Thursday, he had the new lawyer that was hired by the registry by is side; he in turn refused to be defended by the new lawyer and asked for Turner to be reinstated in his defense.

For some reason, Turner who had returned to France after her disagreements with the registry happened to be in court on Thursday also.

There ensured exchanges between legal minds that other people in the court room for lack of a better description wondered; ‘who was fooling who?’ The presiding judge embarrassed by this episode asked members of the public to go out for a closed session.

In the session the judge informed the defense to sort out their mess but for the time being court with continue with new defense lawyer, Nshogoza refused the lawyer and there is no possible description of the eyes of the new, old lawyer, the suspect, the judges and the prosecution.

On another note, the entire ICTR community has just returned from a one month long summer holiday, just before the court began the summer holiday, the UN Security Council had extended the courts mandate till the end of 2009, 14 years since its formation.

Apart from the Nshogoza drama series the ICTR has been busy since the end of the holidays on 16 August. This past week, the entire Appeals Chamber of the ICTY and ICTR based at the headquarters of the International Criminal Court at The Hague was in Arusha hearing Francois Karera’s appeal against a life sentence passed by the First Trial Chamber in December 2007.

The further chamber also overruled the sentence in Muvunyi’s case; his trial will have to be restarted.

Contact: donmuhinda@yahoo.com