Why Erlinder lawsuit was thrown out by US Supreme Court

A CABINET meeting chaired by Prime Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, on Thursday, heard that the USA Supreme Court rejected, as baseless, controversial American attorney Prof. Peter Erlinder’s lawsuit alleging that President Paul Kagame was responsible for the downing of former president Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane.The USA court’s judgment came on Tuesday, the same day, coincidentally, that lawyers for seven senior Rwandan officials indicted by former French terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguière called for the indictments to be quashed following new developments in the case.Justice Minister and Attorney General, Tharcisse Karugarama, on Friday told Sunday Times that while taking into account Erlinder’s case, it was important to bear in mind the fact that in the past, the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) struck him off the list of the tribunal’s counsels because of “his antics.”On April 21, 2011, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) banned Erlinder from appearing before the tribunal as a lead counsel of Genocide suspect, Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze, over misconduct and disregarding the tribunal’s orders.Despite several summons to appear, at the time, he remained elusive and considering, among other things, that his conduct amounted to a failure to act diligently and in good faith and did not demonstrate the highest standards of professional conduct, the court moved to ban him.“They [ICTR] struck him off because they saw there was something fundamentally wrong with him. This guy is a Genocide denier. When he came to Rwanda, he was arrested and charged for those charges,” Karugarama said.On May 28, 2010, Erlinder – then a defense counsel for a genocide suspect, Victoire Ingabire, was arrested in Kigali but was later granted bail on medical and humanitarian grounds. His client, leader of the unregistered party FDU-Inkingi political party, was last October sentenced by the High Court to eight years in jail after finding her guilty of terrorism charges, endangering state security and denying the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Prosecutors later appealed challenging the ‘lenient’ sentence handed to Ingabire as they had previously called for a sentence of 35 years.According to Karugarama, while in Kigali in 2010, Erlinder appealed and duly obtained bail on compassionate and humanitarian grounds since “he said it was not his fault. He said he was insane.”“At the time, the high court initially refused, because when you allege that you are mad, you must prove it. They asked him to prove that he was mentally compromised. So, through the US embassy, they sent for his medical history from the US, showing that he had been attending a psychiatric hospital.”“He was able to prove to the court that he had mental impairment. On those grounds, medical and compassionate or humanitarian, he was granted bail,” said Karugarama.However, surprisingly, when back in the USA, Erlinder filed a case against President Kagame in the state court of Ohio, alleging that the President shot down Habyarimana’s plane, and that he wanted compensation for Habyarimana’s wife along with the wife of former Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira.“We don’t know if that was part of the briefing he got from those women, or if it is part of his mental impairment. We don’t know what is pushing him,” Karugarama said.Erlinder’s initial lawsuit was thrown out by the state court of Ohio. So were subsequent appeals and several other different lawsuits in other American cities. War of courtsEven though the minister could not make out what is really driving Erlinder and Rwanda’s other detractors, he said that, in actual fact, such kinds of litigations or “what we call the war of courts or lawfare,” is a method used by these guys to keep Rwanda permanently on the defensive, to keep its leadership constantly in courts of law so that they don’t have time to plan national development,” Karugarama explained.“It was started by judge Bruguière in France. And all genocide deniers, or genocide fugitives, have been building on this theory. Now the rug has been pulled from under their feet. The decision in the French court of appeal decisively renders their argument hollow.”On Tuesday, Léon Lef Forster and Bernard Maingain – lawyers for Rwandan officials indicted by Bruguière – maintained that a recent decision by the Paris Court of Appeal, which threw out a petition by Habyarimana’s widow, Agathe Kanziga, challenging the results by ballistic experts commissioned by Bruguière’s successors [Judges Marc Trévidic and Nathalie Poux] showed the void in the cases.Among others, in 2009, journalist Christophe Boltanski, charged that Bruguière built his case under the shadow of the French secret service, DST, with which he had a cozy relationship spanning over decades.The 2008 Mucyo report by an independent Commission established the role of France in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. The Mutsinzi report, a follow up Committee of Experts Investigation of the April 6, 1994 Crash of President Habyarimana’s Dassault Falcon-50 Aircraft, also laid bare a number of facts in regard to the shooting down of the plane.UK defense experts support these findings and, in addition, very recently, the French Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal filed against Trevidic’s ruling on grounds that the ballistic experts conducted an authentic investigation. Last year, a team of French experts appointed by French Judges Marc Trévidic and Nathalie Poux, released fresh investigations into the 1994 downing of the plane and confirmed that the missile was fired from Kanombe military barracks, where elements of the former presidential guard, the para-commando battalion, and most importantly, the AntiAircraft Battalion (LAA), were based.In May 2011, Prosecutor General, Martin Ngoga, told a news conference that Erlinder will someday have his day in court to answer charges related to Genocide denial and revisionism, when the appropriate time comes. Ngoga emphasized that nothing will deter Prosecution from pursuing Erlinder who had earlier been released on bail – in Kigali – and remains on bail as Prosecutors continue investigations to strengthen their case against him.Karugarama said: “When the prosecution is ready, they will demand for his extradition to come and continue with the trial. But you see when a guy comes and says he is sick and is mentally impaired, and all that, people tend to go slow because – he will be wasting everybody’s time.”“He admitted those things on camera. This is not secret. There is audio and visual and we retained a copy of the file,” the minister concluded, reiterating that legal options will be examined at an appropriate time.