Editor, RE: “Genocide: UN prosecutor admits to slow progress in hunt for key targets” (The New Times, February 14). Progress, what progress? But even the cases of those whose whereabouts they know very well, such as Wenceslas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta, are as worrying. It is almost two years (since April 2016) that Dr Serge Brammertz (the Prosecutor for the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (which took over from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR]) pledged to press France to move on the Genocide cases wrongly transferred to its jurisdiction for prosecution by the ICTR more than a decade ago (wrongly, because of France’s role in the Genocide and therefore its ability to try the perpetrators is no secret to anybody). As of today, there is, as we expected, no real progress on those cases, beyond clear indications the French intend to engineer a miscarriage of justice to let these genocide suspects off the hook. The entire ICTR, with Judge Theodor Meron giving ‘Get Out of Jail’ passes early releases from cushy imprisonment to even the few génocidaires convicted by the tribunal has been an expensive scam that provided huge benefits to the legal profession. And they wonder why Rwanda refused to be a party to the ICC scam. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...! Indeed, once created, UN programmes, funds, missions, and similar purportedly temporary agencies have an unerring capacity to self-perpetuate while also prioritising their own managerial interests above those of the organisation’s stated goals. The ICTR has been no different. It has, in fact, been an excellent example of managerial satisficing in its dispensation of justice, while applying itself with greater commitment to perpetuate itself through this Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT); par for the course where international bureaucracies are concerned – jobs, power and status before the mission’s goals. Mwene Kalinda
