Defence lawyers in human rights crimes have of recent been reaping a windfall, and in the Rwandan case, it has take wider dimensions. The first glimpse at where crime pays was at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) where 75 key architects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi were on trial. The most amazing thing was that they were the elite of Rwandan society; former ministers, senior army officers clergy, businessmen and other top government and civilian officials. And they all claimed to be indigent - they could not afford a lawyer. The UN, in all its bureaucratic glory could not verify the claims that the suspects were penniless, yet some were plucked from their palatial homes in Nairobi and elsewhere. The UN footed the defence bills. Lawyers took advantage of the many loopholes to drag the cases, in the process milking the world body of millions. Now those defence “skills” have been teleported to Kigali. When the government agreed to meet the defence costs of Genocide suspects extradited to the country, it should have learnt from the Arusha tribunal: many defence lawyers were in it for the money and fame; justice was far from their minds. The government should be fair and firm in dealing with lawyers’ claims and not fall victim to highway robbery– because that is what it is – when it is billed for lawyers’ delaying tactics. Biut the government should to bear the burden of trying to curb this abuse, the Bar Association should step in and bring its members to order, and where necessary, sanction them.
