Rwandan judiciary competent, Ngoga tells UN Security Council

KIGALI - The Prosecutor General, Martin Ngoga, last week defended Rwanda’s judiciary at the UN Security Council during an annual evaluation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Ngoga expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that trial chambers of the ICTR do not deem the country capable of carrying out trials of Genocide suspects transferred from Arusha. “Our achievements in judicial reforms are not intangible; they are very visible, and our participation in the completion process is a response to a call, not a public relations exercise. We must be judged by our misconduct, if there is any in any case,” he added. He added that both the Prosecutor and the Registrar of the tribunal had conducted a series of visits to Rwanda to verify Rwanda’s readiness and willingness to receive ICTR’s outstanding workload, and they were satisfied. “We have continued to improve our institutional mechanisms for co-operation with the ICTR to keep pace with the completion process and the associated co-operation challenges,” Ngoga noted. The ICTR has turned down two requests to transfer Genocide suspects for trial in Rwanda in the last month. Ends

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Rwandan judiciary competent, Ngoga tells UN Security Council