Mugesera makes new demands

The trial in substance of Leon Mugesera was postponed yesterday following the Genocide suspect’s claim that the court is discriminating him, demanding that trial be conducted within the provisions of the special law on the transfers from ICTR and other jurisdictions.After the 27 days that had been granted to him to study his 40,000 page case file, Mugesera was read his five charges which include incitement of the Genocide, planning of the Genocide, complicity in Genocide, harassment of humanity, spreading the hatred among the citizen on basis of region and tribes.Mugesera, a former lecturer in linguistic, is accused of committing these crimes in 1992, and he is most known in an incendiary speech inciting the killing of Tutsis across the country, a speech he gave in western Rwanda.He was deported from Canada in January this year after losing an almost two-decade legal battle against deportation. While he was given the time to plead either guilty or innocent, Mugesera brought in a new claim instead.He said that he is supposed to be tried under the laws of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) whose jurisdiction is to try crimes committed in Rwanda and neighboring countries between January 1, 1994 and December 31, 1994, according to article 1 of the ICTR statute.By implication, Mugesera is pushing for his trial to be rendered null and void, because the crimes he is accused of were committed in 1992.These demands were, however, rebuked by Prosecution led by Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga, who said that article 3 of the same organic law that was passed in 2007 gives room for suspects to be tried under local legislations, much as they may have been transferred to Rwanda under the special legislation.Referring to some jurisprudence where ICTR itself recognises competence of countries to try people over its competence, Ngoga reminded that “this organic law was not put in place to supplement the ICTR law, but to help all the countries understand that whenever they will refer cases to Rwanda, there will be fair trial and that’s what happened with Canada.” Ngoga explained that it doesn’t mean that the referral law will be applied as copy paste to all the trials, but some articles may be referred to in some case and not referred to in others. Prior to this application to the High Court to study its competence in trying his case, Mugesera had argued on matter of the translator who was supplied by the Ministry of Justice, saying he is not competent since he didn’t study translation.The court resolved to use him and insured to Mugesera that if there would be a problem, they would stop him. The hearing of the court decision is due on December 24, a date Mugesera wanted to complain about, because “it’s a day before Christmas.”

National

Mugesera makes new demands