Mugesera admits he was interrogated

Genocide suspect Leon Mugesera yesterday admitted that he was interrogated by both the Judicial Police and the Prosecution and informed the charges against him.Mugesera was appearing before the High Court where he is challenging a decision by Nyarugenge Intermediate Court which had ruled that court proceedings of Mugesera’s case be heard in Kinyarwanda.He had earlier requested that he be interrogated in French, while the prosecution insists on using Kinyarwanda throughout the process.Prosecutor John Bosco Mutangana, assisted by the Head of Fugitive Tracking Unit John, Bosco Siboyintore, challenged Mugesera presenting him with four separate documents of his interrogation and arrest warrants from the judicial police and the Prosecution which were in Kinyarwanda.After reviewing the documents Mugesera hastened to tell the court that he had forgotten about the documents in all earlier hearings. “Yes, I know these documents and I signed them. Actually, I was informed about the crimes I am accused of but not in detail. If this is how interrogations are done, then I was interrogated,” Mugesera told the court.Part of Mugesera’s appeal to the High Court indicated that he was detained illegally claiming that he was never served with a charge sheet.“Mugesera has not given us an opportunity to question him on each and every accusation levelled against him. Every time we were supposed to go into detail he claimed he wanted to use French, which is why we are in this court today,” said Mutangana.He also refuted Mugesera’s claims that he is detained illegally, saying that from the first day he arrived in Rwanda, he was always detained under clear laws and served with arrest warrants.Following a half-day hearing, Judge Anthanase Bakuzakunde set Friday as the date for the verdict on whether Mugesera’s case and in-depth interrogations should be held in French or Kinyarwanda.Prosecution insists the suspect’s insistence on using French is a decoy to water down his incendiary speech, which they maintain is critical within the substantive case. Mugesera was deported to Rwanda from Canada in January this year after exhausting all judicial avenues to block deportation, taking close to two decades.He is mainly accused of having made an inflammatory speech in which he called upon the Hutu to eliminate Tutsi whom he called various derogatory names like ‘scum’ or cockroaches.

National

Mugesera admits he was interrogated