Curtain call for Bagosora and co’s drama

Justice has at last caught up with the mastermind of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis. Colonel Theoneste Bagosora’s trial has dragged on for close to seven years, and in that period, possibly because he knew the die had already been cast in favour of his victims, he turned the trial into a macabre circus. The arrogance of the man and his defence team was displayed throughout the trial that at times it made one wonder whether, unlike King Midas who turned everything he touched into gold, Bagosora contaminated all who came within touching distance. Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, documentary and otherwise, his lawyers and those of his three co-accused, turned the trial into a revisionist show whose fame hinged on their knack of goading and mocking defence witnesses most of them survivors of the chopping board carefully put together by the butchers in the dock.