Letter to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Regarding the Prosecution of RPF Crimes

Justice Hassan B. Jallow

Office of the Prosecutor

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Arusha, Tanzania

Dear Mr. Prosecutor,

As you prepare to brief the Security Council on June 4 on the progress of the Tribunal, we write to urge you once more to prosecute crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1994. With the ICTR scheduled to complete all trials by the end of this year, we ask that you immediately announce your intention to pursue these cases so as not to leave the Security Council with the false impression that the Tribunal's core work at the indictment level is completed.

We were extremely disappointed by your June 2008 decision to transfer files of RPF suspects from the ICTR to Rwanda for domestic prosecution. We fear the reason was your concern that cases involving RPF crimes are too politically difficult for the Tribunal to adjudicate because of the likely need to indict senior figures in Rwanda's military or current government.

At the time of your decision, the Tribunal had just denied two requests to transfer indicted génocidaires to Rwandan courts because they would face unfair trials. The Tribunal concluded, among other things, that defense witnesses might be unavailable, thereby jeopardizing suspects' fair-trial rights. In one of the cases, the Tribunal concluded that the Rwandan judiciary was not independent of political interference.

Since that time, the Tribunal has denied three additional requests for genocide suspects to be transferred to Rwanda. Of the total five cases, three have already been confirmed on appeal. All decisions have emphasized the fear that
potential witnesses face, ranging from intimidation and accusations of genocide ideology (a criminal offense in Rwanda involving any act deemed to espouse hatred or lead to violence) to actual violence and death.  Foreign jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, have dismissed requests for extradition on similar grounds in the past year.

Despite these decisions by both the ICTR and foreign courts making clear that genocide-related cases would face political interference and unfair adjudication in the Rwandan courts, your office  decided to hand over to Rwanda the even more politically sensitive RPF files for domestic prosecution in June 2008. When answering questions by the Security Council on this decision at the time, you stated that your office would monitor the proceedings closely and would recall the case to the ICTR if the trial did not meet international standards.

Despite your commitment to the Security Council to ensure close monitoring of the trial, you sent an observer for only two preliminary detention hearings, one trial day, closing arguments, and the verdict. That cursory presence did not constitute diligent monitoring. Human Rights Watch and several Rwandan nongovernmental organizations and journalists monitored the proceedings.

Since the verdict of the Rwandan trial on October 24, 2008, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly asked for your official assessment of the trial and has urged you to recall the case and try it in accordance with the available evidence. Our most recent discussion was in your office on March 23, 2009.  On each occasion, you told Human Rights Watch you were still looking at the file and would provide a final assessment in due course. You have not offered an assessment, and it is now more than seven months since the verdict and three months since the appellate decision.

We call on you to include in your June 4 briefing to the Security Council an assessment of whether the Rwandan trial complied with international fair trial standards and, if you find such standards were not met, to recall the case to the Tribunal. We understand that you have discretion in deciding which cases to pursue, but we call on you to seek indictments against more senior RPF officers in relation to whom we believe your office has gathered substantial evidence and to pursue such cases vigorously. If necessary, we ask that you request the Security Council to extend the Tribunal's mandate beyond December 31, 2009, to ensure adequate time to prosecute these cases.

We strongly believe that your mandate as Chief Prosecutor will not be fulfilled until you prosecute alleged RPF crimes. Failure to do so will undoubtedly taint perceptions of the Tribunal's impartiality and undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of future generations. Seeking justice for the victims of these RPF crimes neither denies the genocide nor equates these crimes with genocide. It simply asserts that all victims, regardless of the identity of the alleged perpetrator, have the right to seek redress for the wrongs done to them.

We thank you in advance for your attention to this pressing matter.

Kenneth Roth

Executive Director