Record-Breaking Genocide Case Ends

Thijs Bouwknegt

24 June 2011

“We cannot follow the proceedings at the Rwanda tribunal in Butare.” Lambert has no money to travel to Tanzania to witness the trial against alleged genocide suspects from 1994.

The Rwandan would have loved to see the delivery of judgement against Arsène Shalom Ntahobali. He saw him at the university, seventeen years ago. “I would not recognise his face anymore,” he says. “But many people remember his crimes.”

Ntahobali was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the genocide that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. When the massacres started in the southern university town of Butare, Ntahobali changed his mathematics books for a machete. He set up a roadblock near his house where he led a group of Interahamwe militia, ordering them to rape and chop to Tutsis to death.

Now he is wearing a suit, a blue shirt and a tie. He looks over his left shoulder in the direction of his mother, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko. The 65-year old woman was also sentenced to life imprisonment. The former minister of Family and Women’s Affairs had ordered the Hutu militiamen to rape and kill Tutsis. She reportedly even dealt out condoms.

Mother – known as Mama within the walls of the tribunal – and son were on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) together with four other men from Butare. The trial took ten years and ten days. Only loyal defense lawyers and presiding judge William Sekule attended all 726 trial days. The case breaks all records: it is the longest and slowest trial in international justice so far. Probably, it is also the most expensive.

Why it took so long…

Disagreement between the defence parties and incredibly slow questioning of witnesses are the most prominent reasons. Critics say the trial is a “disaster and a shame.” But that does not stop the prosecutor’s team from celebrating the convictions. Even the International Criminal Court registrar – who was among the first prosecutors in the case – travelled to Arusha to witness the judgement.

It is exemplary for the tribunal that was established by the UN only four months after the massacres. But justice is slow, very expensive and far away from the rest of the world. The heart of the prosecutor’s evidence lays in the minds of Rwandans. Hundreds of witnesses have travelled to Arusha to share their stories. But most of them remain unknown. They give evidence behind a pale blue curtain that separates the courtroom from the public gallery.

Also the tribunal is not very popular in Rwanda. At the small information centre in Kigali you will only find a handful of lawyers, while the local ICTR offices are fenced off from the outside world. But above all, Arusha is too far to travel to and for ordinary Rwandans it is hard to follow the academic debates in the courtrooms. People also do not understand why the international community has spent already more that 1,5 billion dollars on trying the elite. “The money could have better been invested in national courts and development,” says Lambert.

The successes of the ICTR…

But the tribunal has had its successes as well. It was the first international court to convict someone of genocide, when it sentenced Jean Paul Akayesu to life imprisonment in 1998. The prosecutors also managed to bring a broad variety of “big fishes” to Arusha. The judges convicted a total of 51 persons, including politicians, army leaders and militiamen. And it also managed to sent to prison an historian, two journalists and the popular singer Simon Bikindi.

Nine persons pleaded guilty while eight others were acquitted, mainly because of lack of reliable evidence. Three of them are however still living in Arusha since many countries are not fond of receiving former genocide suspects.

The ICTR documented an important part of Rwandan history. It collected containers full of evidence and witness testimony. But there is an important part missing. To the dissatifaction of human right organisations, the prosecutors only went after Hutus, while the actions of the Tutsi-led RPF are well documented. A UN commission concluded in 1994 that the then rebel movement was responsible for atrocities that fall under the ICTR’s mandate. But no RPF suspects were ever brought to Tanzania.

Former chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte did start investigations into the conduct of Paul Kagame’s men. But then she ran into serious political opposition and before she had drafted indictments, her bosses at the UN only allowed her to deal with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2003. Her successor Hassan Jallow kept the file for a few years and sent the men to Kigali in 2008. Four RPF soldiers were tried, but only for several murders.

It leaves a bitter taste at a tribunal that has to close its doors in 2014. But despite the criticism, the ICTR staff tries to complete its mandate, in the shadow of Kilimanjaro and the more popular tribunals in The Hague. There are still nine alleged “genocidaires” on the run. Among them is Felicien Kabuga, the financial mastermind behind the genocide. But even last Tuesday, Interahamwe leader Bernard Munyagishari denied his involvement in the killing of thousands of Tutsis. He was arrested a day before Ratko Mladic.

Seventeen years after the genocide, Butare is a calm and quiet town. Foreign researchers and students enjoy the tranquility at the town’s main restaurants. Several tourists visit the national historical museum, where there is no trace of genocide to be found. “The people in Butare carry the burden of the genocide,” says Lambert. “It does not matter where the “génocidaires” are being tried, as long as the perpetrators face some justice.”

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