Africa, Headlines, Human Rights, North America

RIGHTS: Experts Question Verdict on Alleged Rwandan War Criminal

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Sep 17 2003 (IPS) - Investigations and prosecutions of alleged war crimes will not be damaged by the refusal of a Canadian court to deport a former Rwandan political activist or to accept evidence from expert witnesses, says an international law specialist.

Ottawa chose to put Leon Mugesera, now a resident of Quebec City, through the ”narrow process” of a deportation hearing rather than subject him to prosecution and trial in Canada for his alleged activities in Rwanda, says Fiona McKay of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Human Rights.

Yet, European countries like Belgium and Switzerland have successfully arrested and tried alleged Rwandan war criminals on their territory, she points out.

”It is disappointing that Canada is breaking it down to a question of – to deport or not to deport," added the director of LCHR’s international justice programme.

Government lawyers sought to have Mugesera deported on the grounds that he had delivered a speech at a 1992 political rally in Rwanda that included an incitement of genocide and racial hatred against the minority Tutsis.

Ottawa alleged that Mugesera’s inflammatory comments helped create the circumstances for the eventual massacre of 800,000 people -mostly Tutsis – at the hands of members of the Hutu majority, two years later.

But in their denial of Ottawa’s bid to deport Mugesera, the three Federal Court of Appeal justices cited the altering of Mugesera’s speech in the Kinyarwanda language ”for partisan reasons” by the International Committee of Inquiry, whose research into the genocide has been the basis for prosecutions of people charged with war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The attitude of Committee of Inquiry co-chair Alison Des Forges throughout her testimony ”disclosed a clear bias against Mr. Mugesera and an implacable determination to defend the conclusions arrived at by the ICI and to have Mr.Mugesera’s head”, stated Justice Decary in the court decision.

”Even though it is true some of his statements were misplaced or unfortunate, there is nothing in the evidence to indicate that Mr. Mugesera under the cover of anecdotes or other imagery, deliberately incited to murder, hatred or genocide,” it adds.

According to one observer, the Canadian court understood that Mugesera was making a patriotic speech in defence of his country when it was being invaded by a Ugandan-supported rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which eventually came to power in the capital Kigali in 1994.

David Jacobs, a Toronto human rights and labour lawyer, who has represented clients before the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania, applauds the ruling. ”The judges’ decision is an example of how important it is to go beyond the face value of declarations of people who style themselves as historians or people interested in human rights.”

But Des Forges, a senior advisor for international group Human Rights Watch (HRW) counters that the tone of Mugesera’s speech was considered so objectionable that he faced an arrest warrant from the then Rwandan government soon after delivering it in 1992.. Subsequently, he was forced to flee his country.

”What I stand behind is not my interpretation of the speech, but the interpretation of Rwandans, including the minister of justice and someone in the same political party as Mugesera (the Mouvement revolutionnaire national pour le developpment),” Des Forges told IPS.

She calls the court’s decision ”disappointing” but ”not of great significance” personally, and believes that it will not affect her ability or credibility as a prosecution witness in future legal proceedings involving alleged war crimes by Rwandans.

”I think my reputation has been established over the past 30 years," Des Forges added.

McKay says it is important that courts in Canada and elsewhere put evidence gathered by investigators of war crimes under close scrutiny.

But she says the Canadian judges failed to appreciate that Des Forges and her colleagues at the Committee of Inquiry ”were not carrying out a judicial inquiry”.

Errol Mendes a professor of law at the University of Ottawa, believes that Canadian government lawyers focused too much on Mugesera’s speech and not enough on the larger context of the three to four years of planning that made the Rwandan genocide possible.

Another observer has a more harsh assessment.

Canada has been very good at deporting the ”small fry” in war crimes cases but not ”the advocators, the inciters and the commanders”, says David Matas, a Winnipeg lawyer and a spokesperson for the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for International Justice..

”We do not have a judiciary that consistently is prepared to take this issue seriously. There is too much erraticism, and we get these wild and crazy judgments, that basically prevent anything from being done,” adds Matas, who is calling for Ottawa to establish a separate and specialised war crimes legal tribunal.

He places the blame for decisions like the Mugesera one on Canadian ”insularity”, where ”the crimes are so horrid that people who aren’t used to dealing with them, set up a mechanism of denial”.

The Canadian government is expected to appeal the court’s decision.