Justice grinds slowly for victims of genocide

Rwanda: In 11 years the Rwandan tribunal has completed a mere 28 trials, writes Joe Humphreys in Arusha.

Rwanda: In 11 years the Rwandan tribunal has completed a mere 28 trials, writes Joe Humphreys in Arusha.

Arusha's eight-storey conference centre is a hive of activity. In the narrow, stuffy corridors, red-robed judges compete for space with security guards, lawyers, witnesses and curious visitors to what was meant to be a short-term home for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Eleven years on, however, and the tribunal is still here in the northern Tanzanian town.

The United Nations-sponsored body recently estimated that the total cost of the inquiry would hit $1 billion by 2008 - the year when its mandate is due to run out.

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And what has it got to show for itself? Just 28 trials have been completed, some of them relating to medium- and low-ranking perpetrators of the 1994 genocide that claimed 800,000 lives in just 100 days.

President Mary McAleese, who visited the inquiry yesterday as part of her three-country tour of Africa, was eager to accentuate the positives, describing the tribunal's work as "pioneering" in that a group of political and military leaders "were told emphatically by the world that no matter what it took they were going to be held accountable".

While the tribunal was never going to prosecute every guilty party, she said, it had made a "very important start", as well as setting the groundwork for the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Not everyone is so upbeat about the inquiry, however, with some observers concerned that it may do more harm than good in the long run.

The Rwandan government, which has always had an uneasy relationship with the tribunal, today depicts it as a dangerous folly. The government of former rebel leader Paul Kagame has consistently argued that the UN money would be better spent on building the criminal justice system in Rwanda, where 120,000 people were arrested after the genocide and are now being tried in piecemeal fashion in semi-legal "grass courts".

The acquittal of a number of notorious defendants at the tribunal has bolstered the Rwandan government's case, while also stirring up old animosities.

The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, said he understood Rwanda's dismay at some of the judgments, noting he himself had been unhappy in certain instances. "But we have to accept the final decision of the courts."

Concerns have also being raised that a legal vacuum could be created once the tribunal's UN mandate lapses in less than 18 months. Mr Jallow admitted that because of the deadline the tribunal had to select only those cases "which we were convinced we would be able to finish within that timeframe".

While he was confident the tribunal had arrested the right people, "there are of course many, many more - hundreds more - people involved in the genocide whom we cannot prosecute".

Much of the tension between the tribunal and the Rwandan government revolves around the ownership of the genocide "story". Attempts by the tribunal to extradite certain government allies have been resisted by Mr Kagame, who has become increasingly prickly about what he calls historical revisionists.

The Rwandan president recently launched a broadside against the award-winning film Hotel Rwanda for depicting in an heroic light Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu businessman who harboured Tutsi families during the genocide.

"Someone is trying to rewrite the history of Rwanda and we cannot accept it," he told reporters in Washington earlier this month where he met one of his closest political sympathisers George W Bush.

Mr Rusesabagina's main crime seems to have been his outspokenness against an alleged denial of political freedom to Hutus under Mr Kagame's government.

In his recently published autobiography, the former hotel-owner writes: "Rwanda is today a nation governed by and for the benefit of a small group of elite Tutsis . . . Those few Hutus who have been elevated to high-ranking posts are usually empty suits without any real authority of their own." The tribunal had hoped to defuse such tensions by demonstrating impartiality.

It had also hoped to help generate reconciliation in Rwanda by getting genocidaires to admit to their crimes.

But, Mr Jallow admitted, "unfortunately, the majority of them don't seem to have any remorse, and that is very disturbing in terms of the future. Some of the major culprits continue to deny that there was anything such as a genocide - even after conviction."

Ireland contributed $432,058 (€341,664) to the tribunal in 2006, and the Department of Foreign Affairs said it was examining the possibility of assisting witnesses, who had fallen ill in Rwanda, with medical expenses.

However, Mr Jallow is keen for Ireland and other countries to support the tribunal in other ways, including the provision of both funds and expertise to neighbouring African states which had expressed a willingness to try defendants.

Yesterday he urged Ireland to consider giving asylum to certain family members of witnesses who were assisting the tribunal.

The inquiry was looking at about "half a dozen people" who needed safe passage abroad, and it hoped Ireland would look upon the request favourably.

In the meantime,he cogs of justice continue to move slowly. Although four courtrooms operate in unison in the tribunal building, proceedings crawl at a snail's pace - each word being translated into three languages by stenographers.

Not that the tribunal's president, Norwegian judge Eric Mose, will make any apologies. "Everyone is working extremely hard and we are efficient," he said, adding that he was confident the tribunal would complete its work by the UN Security Council-set deadline.

He said critics of the tribunal should take into account the fact that it was the first ad hoc tribunal of its kind, and "there is now huge experience" in the area - experience which has fed into the Liberia/Sierra Leone war crimes court that recently captured former local strongman Charles Taylor.

The cost of such measures might seem high to the average person, Mr Mose continued.

But "I think the world should be ready to pay the price for justice."