The New Times Editorial

Cooperate in the hunt, arrest of Genocidaires The Prosecutor General’s office has expressed regret at the fact that despite the call on the international community to assist Rwanda apprehend Genocide fugitives, African countries have made very little attempt to do so, in direct contrast to Europe. This is a serious charge, which cannot be let to pass without comment. Rwanda has made direct contact with individual countries where known genocidaire suspects live. It has officially requested for their arrest, through the involvement of Interpol, which got involved fully when it published a list of the said suspects, and in some cases specified where they were hiding or living. The international community also showed the need to help when it established an international court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) based in Arusha, Tanzania, to try Genocidaires. If the handling of cases there has left a lot to be desired, the issue of having such deadly suspects living on the loose has been frowned upon, and one would expect that they would be arrested immediately their whereabouts were known. But no. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo, diplomatic static, and polite exchanges, that have never yielded any positive results in the sense of bringing terrible wrong doers to book. What Rwanda would love to hear is that Felicien Kabuga has been arrested in, say Kenya; as he should, because he appears on a list of wanted criminals issued by Interpol. Then the palaver about how he should be tried would follow. Why, for example, shouldn’t Mozambique arrest the known criminals living on its soil? It is a non-argument to bring such reasons like having no extradition treaties with Rwanda. They do not have to be brought back and tried from Rwanda. There is an international court in Tanzania. It should be embarrassing to Africa that Europe, America and Canada are cooperating more than brother Africans, because those countries have arrested, and in some cases started prosecuting the Genocide suspects. Brother Africans, let us cooperate on the issue of arresting and prosecuting Genocidaires, as we are aggressively seeking cooperation in other spheres like economic and even political.Ends