Street smart lawyers and complicated big wigs in ICTR’s corridors

The turns and twists at the ICTR can almost be compared to a Steven Spielberg Hollywood blockbuster. The same cannot be said for a typical day in court. Most of the time a journalist would need an eagle’s eye to find a story, so as it turns out that the public galleries are filled with tourists. The court is part of the package that Arusha’s leisure industry and myriad travel agencies offer. Indeed visiting the court is high on the priority list for tourists in Arusha, leaving the public galleries looking more like a tour centre, filled with tourists and their travel garb. Most of the court’s activities don’t take place inside the courtrooms. Today as I was pacing around the corridors snooping around for a possible idea, a story appears from nowhere. It came just in time. I was beginning to panic. What would my editors back in Kigali be thinking? My usefulness to the editorial team was in jeopardy. I could imagine them nodding their heads in agreement about a replacement during a proverbial Monday morning meeting. At the ICTR such days are many, little wonder the nearby huge supermarket is largely filled with liquor. From heaven God sent a story. It was about a smart legal executive of a powerful Kenyan petroleum distribution and marketing firm whose image was violated by alleged business links between the firm and Genocide suspect Félicien Kabugaa who is reportedly hiding in Kenya. Before meeting another street wise lawyer, I was reading through a judgment. Once again the ICTR big wigs showed their disapproval of the quality of their counterparts in Rwanda by turning down another request to transfer Gaspard Kanyarukiga who is charged with four counts of acts against humanity. The judges are not happy with Rwanda’s judicial system but they are happy with Rwanda’s continuing judicial reforms since 2003. The ICTR has been facilitating the training and capacity building of Rwanda’s judiciary. However, in the case involving Yusuf Munyakazi where they also refused to transfer the accused to Rwanda, the judges showed sympathy towards Fernando Merreles and Bruguiliere for their indictments to some leaders within the RPF. The decision left me wondering why the ICTR judges showed sympathy towards Bruguliere and Merelles and meanwhile dismissed the competence of Rwandan legal experts. It is important to note here that the issue of transferring cases is a very complex one. For one the issue involves the role of France in the genocide. For the record, in the case of France, almost all the suspects that have critical information regarding the role of France in Rwanda 1994 have been facilitated in one way or another to have their cases tried elsewhere. The judges, it has been said, have used the data from institutions such as Human Rights Watch to come to the conclusion that Rwanda’s judicial system is not sufficiently competent to try their fellow Rwandans in a fair and open manner. If the judiciary in Rwanda is under pressure as the judges alleged last week, the ICTR is also under some pressure from powers like France. The transfers also have a direct bearing on another more important aspect of the ICTR: the completion strategy. The same court allowed the transfer of suspects to France earlier, however, the past two weeks the court turned down requests to transfer of suspects to Rwanda, in these particular cases there was insider politics at play. These reports and judge verdicts have put the entire Gacaca system into question, Gacaca has been described as the best possible arrangement for justice in Rwanda in light of 1994. One guy argued the other day during lunchbreak that ‘Rwandans are the best placed people to give lectures on human rights and justice, not white collared people in dark suits.’ So the court once again refused to transfer two ‘small fish’ in Munyakazi and Kanyarukiga to Rwanda and allowed France to try the ‘bigger fish’ which ought to be swimming in the waters of Arusha detention facilities. Ends