Tuesday, November 24, 2009

THE PREPARED TESTIMONY & STATEMENT for the RECORD of Wayne MADSEN

by Duci Simonovic







THE PREPARED TESTIMONY & STATEMENT for the RECORD of Wayne MADSEN

[This is a document, really, an old document--a pre-911 document--posted here to furnish some of the back-up that's been demanded for what we’ve called "The Diabolical International Plan Against Congo," taken and translated from the French-language journal, Grands-Lacs Confidentiel, of 10 January 2005.

http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2005/1/11/237836.html

The gist of the article is that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Western, primarily Anglo-Saxon, powers set about through their military superiority, on which their domestic economies had become insatiably dependent, to reassert their influence in those regions of the post-colonial Second and Third Worlds: throughout Eastern Europe, from the Baltics to the Balkans, and in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Pacific Rim, to intervene in or otherwise sabotage Russian and Chinese financial and commercial dominion there; and, in Africa, from the Horn to Central Africa through to Zimbabwe and South Africa, in a similarly intentioned seige of Congo.

The concurrent globalization wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, whose strikingly creepy similarities culminate with the single shared Appeals Chamber of these only geographically separate International Criminal Tribunals--known as 'ad hocs' because of their illegal creation by the UN Security Council to deal with just these two fronts of the Western Waste Capitalist aggressions against Europe and Africa. That is to say, the same appeals court, headed by the Shakespeare and Serbian death camp aficionado--who still hangs Penny Marshall and Ed Vuillamy's potted portrait of Fikret Alic on the wrong side of the chicken wire at Trnopolje--Judge Teodor Meron--the same court that acquitted Protais Zigiranyirazo, the brother-in-law of martyred Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, of genocide charges, was the court that instructed the Trial Chamber at the ICTR in the Military 1 case to take 'Judicial Notice' of the Rwandan genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus--i.e., that the trial chamber should accept the Tutsi genocide as a given, a donnée, without it having to be proved. Thus the Arusha Tribunal was able to acquit of any conspiracy or planning in this mega-crime all the Military 1 defendants, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, Brigadier General Gratien Kabiligi, Lieutenant Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, and Major Aloys Ntabakuze, the so-called ‘brains of the 1994 genocide,’ while sentencing them to life imprisonment for not intervening to stop ‘crimes of genocide’ committed by those under their command.

These unwholesome and bumbling Siamese twins reflect ever-more grimly on their UN/NATO parentage and patronage. To cover their intimations of immorality, a great deal of bogus data, disinformation fraught with sentimentality, has been churned out by all sides about how different the two Tribunals really are; how different the European and African 'genocides' are--to the Serbs, the Rwandan genocide is ‘a real genocide,’ while the genocide at Srebrenica is a fake, and Carla Del Ponte was fired from the Rwanda Tribunal (a righteous Tribunal, prosecuting a righteous genocide) because she refused to make a strong enough case against the real genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus, while devoting all her time to persecuting Serbian heros like Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic--and gloating over her complicity in the murder of President Slobodan Milosevic. For the Rwandan survivors of the genocide, Srebrenica is cat’s piss (8,000 in Bosnia compared to more than 100 times that in Rwanda), and Del Ponte got broomed because she suggested she might open files on the other perpetrators of the other genocide--General Paul Kagame’s (putatively Tutsi) RPF, the mass murderers of the Hutu refugees in Rwanda and Congo. The Rwandan defenders even lavish praise on the miserable Florence Hartmann’s snide, insinuating, shitty little book, Peace and Punishment, for its two whole pages on how Del Ponte was concerned by war crimes and crimes against humanity in Central Africa that are still off the Tribunal’s docket.

But all these false distinctions are just shabby cover for the involvement of the US military and its various vassal armies in the conquest of these formerly ‘non-aligned’ (read: Francophone) regions. It is seldom discussed about Rwanda, but, like Yugoslavia/Serbia, the revolutionary (majoritarian Hutu) governments of Gregoire Kayibanda and Juvénal Habyarimana were very close to the Communist governments of the USSR, People’s China and North Korea.

But if any doubt remains as to just why all this military wastage was necessary--why between three and six million had to die; why the minority Tutsis had to be so hated by the majority Hutus; and the Slavic (Orthodox) Serbs had to feel such murderous unto genocidal rage against the Muslims of Bosnia and the Catholic (Aryan) Croats: one need look no further than the agenda of the US DoD, and the private industrial combine it fronts--or any of its numerous private military affiliates like MPRI or Dyncorp--and count the number of American bases that have broken out in these former-theaters of ethnic, religious or tribal wars.

And that will bring you right back to Wayne Madsen’s testimony before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Committee on International Relations.

--And, as a hopeful end note: Pierre Péan told me he is finishing up a book on the US military involvement in Central Africa and Congo. Now to get his work into Englsih. --mc]

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Prepared Testimony and Statement for the Record of Wayne Madsen, Investigative Journalist and author of
“Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999.”


On: Suffering and Despair: Humanitarian Crisis in the Congo--
Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Committee on International Relations,
United States House of Representatives



Washington, DC, May 17, 2001



My name is Wayne Madsen. I am the author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999[1], a work that involved some three years worth of research and countless interviews in Rwanda, Uganda, France, the United Kingdom, United States, Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands. I am an investigative journalist who specializes on intelligence and privacy issues. I am grateful to appear before the Committee today. I am also appreciative of the Committee’s interest in holding this hearing on the present situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.



I wish to discuss the record of American policy in the DRC over most of the past decade particularly involving the eastern Congo region. It is a policy that has rested, in my opinion, on the twin pillars of military aid and questionable trade. The military aid programs of the United States, largely planned and administered by the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), have been both overt and covert.



Prior to the first Rwandan invasion of Zaire/DRC in 1996, a phalanx of U.S. intelligence operatives converged on Zaire. Their actions suggested a strong interest in Zaire’s eastern defenses. The number-two person at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali travelled from Kigali to eastern Zaire to initiate intelligence contacts with the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL-CZ) rebels under the command of the late President Laurent Kabila. The Rwandan embassy official met with rebel leaders at least twelve times.[2]



A former U.S. ambassador to Uganda - acting on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – gathered intelligence on the movement of Hutu refugees through eastern Zaire. The DIA’s second ranking Africa hand, who also served as the U.S. military attaché in Kigali, reconnoitered the Rwandan border towns of Cyangugu and Gisenyi, gathering intelligence on the cross border movements of anti-Mobutu Rwandan Tutsis from Rwanda.[3]



The Defense Intelligence Agency’s African bureau chief established a close personal relationship with Bizima (alias Bizimana) Karaha, an ethnic Rwandan who would later become the Foreign Minister in the Laurent Kabila government. Moreover, the DIA’s Africa division had close ties with Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), an Alexandria, Virginia, private military company (PMC), whose Vice President for Operations is a former Director of DIA.



The political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, accompanied by a CIA operative, traveled with AFDL-CZ rebels through the eastern Zaire jungles for weeks after the 1996 Rwandan invasion of Zaire. In addition, it was reported that the Kinshasa embassy official and three U.S. intelligence agents regularly briefed Bill Richardson, Clinton’s special African envoy, during the rebels’ steady advance towards Kinshasa.[4] The U.S. embassy official conceded that he was in Goma to do
more than meet rebel leaders for lunch. Explaining his presence, he said, “What I am here to do is to acknowledge them [the rebels] as a very significant military and political power on the scene, and, of course, to represent American interests.”[5] In addition, MPRI was reportedly providing covert training assistance to Kagame’s troops in preparation for combat in Zaire.[6] Some believe that MPRI had actually been involved in training the RPF from the time it took power in Rwanda.[7]




THE BA-N’DAW REPORT



The covert programs involving the use of private military training firms and logistics support contractors that are immune to Freedom of Information Act requests is particularly troubling for researchers and journalists who have tried, over the past several years, to get at the root causes for the deaths and mayhem in the DRC and other countries in the region. These U.S. contractor support programs have reportedly involved covert assistance to the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries - the major backers of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la démocratie (RCD factions and – as reported by the UN’s “Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC”—are responsible for the systematic pillaging of Congo’s most valuable natural resources. The UN panel - chaired by Safiatou Ba-N’Daw of Cote d’Ivoire—concluded.



“Top military commanders from various countries needed and continue to need this conflict for its lucrative nature and for temporarily solving some internal problems in those countries a well as allowing access to wealth.”



There is more than ample evidence that the elements of the U.S. military and intelligence community may have - on varying occasions - aided and abetted this systematic pillaging by the Ugandan and Rwandan militaries. The UN Report named the United States, Germany, Belgium, and Kazakhstan as leading buyers of the illegally exploited resources from the DRC.



Sources in the Great Lakes region consistently report the presence of a U.S.-built military base near Cyangugu, Rwanda, near the Congolese border. The base, reported to have been partly constructed by the U.S. firm Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Haliburton, is said to be involved with training RPF forces and providing logistics support to their troops in the DRC. Additionally, the presence in the region of black U.S. soldiers supporting the RPF and Ugandans has been something consistently reported since the first invasion of Zaire-Congo in 1996. On January 21, 1997, France claimed it actually recovered the remains of two American combatants killed near the Oso River in Kivu province during combat and returned them to American officials. The U.S. denied these claims.[8]



COVERT AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR THE COMBATANTS



As U.S. troops and intelligence agents were pouring into Africa to help the RPF and AFDL-CZ forces in their 1996 campaign against Mobutu, Vincent Kern, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, told the House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee on December 4, 1996, that U.S. military training for the RPF was being conducted under a program called Enhanced International Military Education and Training (EIMET). Kathi Austin, a Human Rights Watch specialist on arms transfers in Africa, told the Subcommittee on May 5, 1998, that one senior U.S. embassy official in Kigali described the U.S. Special Forces training program for the RPF as “killers . . . training killers.”[9]



In November 1996, U.S. spy satellites and a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion were attempting to ascertain how many Rwandan Hutu refugees were in eastern Zaire. The P-3 was one of four stationed at old Entebbe Airport on the shores of Lake Victoria. Oddly, while other planes flying over eastern Zaire attracted anti-aircraft fire from Kabila’s forces, the P-3s, which patrolled the skies above Goma and Sake, were left alone.[10]



Relying on the overhead intelligence, U.S. military and aid officials confidently announced that 600,000 Hutu refugees returned home to Rwanda from Zaire. But that left an estimated 300,000 unaccounted for. Many Hutus seemed to be disappearing from camps around Bukavu.



By December 1996, U.S. military forces were also operating in Bukavu amid throngs of Hutus, less numerous Twa refugees, Mai Mai guerrillas, advancing Rwandan troops, and AFDL-CZ rebels. A French military intelligence officer said he detected some 100 armed U.S. troops in the eastern Zaire conflict zone.[11] Moreover, the DGSE reported the Americans had knowledge of the extermination of Hutu refugees by Tutsis in both Rwanda and eastern Zaire and were doing nothing about it. More ominously, there was reason to believe that some U.S. forces, either Special Forces or mercenaries, may have actually participated in the extermination of Hutu refugees. The killings reportedly took place at a camp on the banks of the Oso River near Goma.[12] Roman Catholic reports claim that the executed included a number of Hutu Catholic priests. At least for those who were executed, death was far quicker than it was for those who escaped deep into the jungle. There, many died from tropical diseases or were attacked and eaten by wild animals.[13]



Jacques Isnard, the Paris based defense correspondent for Le Monde supported the contention of U.S. military knowledge of the Oso River massacre but went further. He quoted French intelligence sources that believed that between thirty and sixty American mercenary “advisers” participated with the RPF in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees around Goma. Although his number of Hutu dead was more conservative than the French estimates, the U.N.’s Chilean investigator, Roberto Garreton, reported the Kagame and Kabila forces had committed “crimes against humanity” in killing thousands [emphasis added] of Hutu refugees.[14] It was known that the planes the U.S. military deployed in eastern Zaire included heavily armed and armored helicopter gunships typically used by the Special Forces. These were fitted with 105 mm cannons, rockets, machine guns, land mine ejectors, and, more importantly, infra red sensors used in night operations. U.S. military commanders unabashedly stated the purpose of these gunships was to locate refugees to determine the best means of providing them with humanitarian assistance.[15]



According to the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles, a French DC-8 Sarigue electronic intelligence (ELINT) aircraft circled over eastern Zaire at the time of the Oso River massacre. The Sarigue’s mission was to intercept and fix the radio transmissions of Rwandan military units engaged in the military operations. This aircraft, in addition to French special ground units, witnessed U.S. military ethnic cleansing in Zaire’s Kivu Province[16].



In September 1997, the prestigious Jane’s Foreign Report reported that German intelligence sources were aware that the DIA trained young men and teens from Rwanda, Uganda, and eastern Zaire for periods of up to two years and longer for the RPF/AFDL-CZ campaign against Mobutu. The recruits were offered pay of between $450 and $1000 upon their successful capture of Kinshasa.[17] Toward the end of 1996, U.S. spy satellites were attempting to ascertain how many refugees escaped into the jungle by locating fires at night and canvas tarpaulins during the day. Strangely, every time an encampment was discovered by the space-based imagery, Rwandan and Zaire rebel forces attacked the sites. This was the case in late February 1997, when 160,000, mainly Hutu refugees, were spotted and then attacked in a swampy area known as Tingi Tingi.[18] There was never an adequate accounting by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies of the scope of intelligence provided to the RPF/AFDL-CZ. An ominous report on the fate of refugees was made by Nicholas Stockton, the Emergencies Director of Oxfam U.K. & Ireland. He said that on November 20, 1996, he was shown U.S. aerial intelligence photographs which “confirmed, in considerable detail, the existence of 500,000 people distributed in three major and numerous minor agglomerations.” He said that three days later the U.S. military claimed it could only locate one significant mass of people, which they claimed were identified as former members of the Rwandan armed forces and the Interhamwe militia. Since they were the number one targets for the RPF forces, their identification and location by the Americans was undoubtedly passed to the Rwandan forces. They would personnel in central Africa [sic] said that any deaths among the Hutu refugees merely constituted “collateral damage.” When the AFDL-CZ and their Rwandan allies reached Kinshasa in 1996, it was largely due to the help of the United States. One reason why Kabila’s men advanced into the city so quickly was the technical assistance provided by the DIA and other intelligence agencies. According to informed sources in Paris, U.S. Special Forces actually accompanied ADFL-CZ forces into Kinshasa. The Americans also reportedly provided Kabila’s rebels and Rwandan troops with high definition spy satellite photographs that permitted them to order their troops to plot courses into Kinshasa that avoided encounters with Mobutu’s forces.[20] During the rebel advance toward Kinshasa, Bechtel provided Kabila, at no cost, high technology intelligence, including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite data.[21]




AMERICAN MILITARY SUPPORT FOR THE SECOND INVASION OF CONGO



By 1998, the Kabila regime had become an irritant to the United States, North American mining interests, and Kabila’s Ugandan and Rwandan patrons. As a result, Rwanda and Uganda launched a second invasion of the DRC to get rid of Kabila and replace him with someone more servile. The Pentagon was forced to admit on August 6, 1998, that a twenty man U.S. Army Rwanda Interagency Assessment Team (RIAT) was in Rwanda at the time of the second RPF invasion of Congo. The camouflaged unit was deployed from the U.S. European Command in Germany.[22] It was later revealed that the team in question was a JCET unit that was sent to Rwanda to help the Rwandans “defeat ex-FAR (Rwandan Armed Forces) and Interhamwe” units. A U.S. Special Forces JCET team began training Rwandan units on July 15, 1998. It was the second such training exercise held that year. The RIAT team was sent to Rwanda in the weeks just leading up to the outbreak of hostilities in Congo.[23] The RIAT, specializing in counter insurgency operations, traveled to Gisenyi on the Congolese border just prior to the Rwandan invasion.[24] One of the assessments of the team recommended that the United States establish a new and broader military relationship with Rwanda. National Security Council spokesman P. J. Crowley, said of the RIAT’s presence in Rwanda: “I think it’s a coincidence that they were there at the same time the fighting began.”[25]



Soon, however, as other African nations came to the assistance of Laurent Kabila, the United States found itself in the position of providing military aid under both the E-IMET and the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) programs. U.S. Special Operations personnel were involved in training troops on both sides of the war in the DRC - Rwandans, Ugandans, and Burundians (supporting the RCD factions) and Zimbabweans and Namibians (supporting the central government in Kinshasa). As with the first invasion, there were also a number of reports that the RPF and their RCD allies carried out a number of massacres throughout the DRC. The Vatican reported a sizable killing of civilians in August 1998 in Kasika, a small village in South Kivu that hosted a Catholic mission station. Over eight hundred people, including priests and nuns, were killed by Rwandan troops. The RCD response was to charge the Vatican with aiding Kabila. The Rwandans, choosing to put into practice what the DIA’s PSYOPS personnel had taught them about mounting perception management campaigns, shepherded the foreign press to carefully selected killing fields. The dead civilians were identified as exiled Burundian Hutu militia men. Unfortunately, many in the international community, still suffering a type of collective guilt over the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, gave the Rwandan assertions more credence than was warranted. The increasing reliance by the Department of Defense on so-called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) is of special concern. Many of these PMCs -- once labeled as “mercenaries” by previous administrations when they were used as foreign policy instruments by the colonial powers of France, Belgium, Portugal, and South Africa—have close links with some of the largest mining and oil companies involved in Africa today. PMCs, because of their proprietary status, have a great deal of leeway to engage in covert activities far from the reach of congressional investigators. They can simply claim that their business in various nations is a protected trade secret and the law now seems to be on their side.




PROFITING FROM THE DESTABILIZATION OF CENTRAL AFRICA



America’s policy toward Africa during the past decade, rather than seeking to stabilize situations where civil war and ethnic turmoil reign supreme, has seemingly promoted destabilization. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was fond of calling pro-U.S. military leaders in Africa who assumed power by force and then cloaked themselves in civilian attire, “beacons of hope.” In reality, these leaders, who include the current presidents of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola, Eritrea, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, preside over countries where ethnic and civil turmoil permit unscrupulous international mining companies to take advantage of the strife to fill their own coffers with conflict diamonds, gold, copper, platinum, and other precious minerals - including one - columbite-tantalite or “coltan”—which is a primary component of computer microchips and printed circuit boards. Some of the companies involved in this new “scramble for Africa” have close links with PMCs and America’s top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo’s civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on African matters.[26]



The United States has a long history of supporting all sides in the DRC’s civil wars in order to gain access to the country’s natural resources. The Ba-N’Daw Report presents a cogent example of how one U.S. firm was involved in the DRC’s grand thievery before the 1998 break between Laurent Kabila and his Rwandan and Ugandan backers. It links the Banque de commerce, du developpement et d’industrie (BCDI) of Kigali, Citibank in New York, the diamond business and armed rebellion. The report states: “In a letter signed by J.P. Moritz, general manager of Societe miniere de Bakwanga (MIBA), a Congolese diamond company, and Ngandu Kamenda, the general manager of MIBA ordered a payment of US$3.5 million to la Generale de commerce d’import/export du Congo (COMIEX), a company owned by late President Kabila and some of his close allies, such as Minister Victor Mpoyo, from an account in BCDI through a Citibank account. This amount of money was paid as a contribution from MIBA to the AFDL war effort.” Also troubling are the ties that some mining companies in Africa have with military privateers.



UN Special Rapporteur Enrique Ballesteros of Peru concluded in his March 2001 report for the UN Commission on Human Rights, that mercenaries were inexorably linked to the illegal diamond and arms trade in Africa. He stated, “Mercenaries participate in both types of traffic, acting as pilots of aircraft and helicopters, training makeshift troops in the use of weapons and transferring freight from place to place. Ballesteros added, “Military security companies and air cargo companies registered in Nevada (the United States), in the Channel Islands and especially in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, are engaged in the transport of troops, arms, munitions, and diamonds.”



In 1998, America Minerals Fields purchased diamond concessions in the Cuango Valley along the Angolan-Congolese border from International Defense and Security (IDAS Belgium SA), a mercenary firm based in Curacao and headquartered in Belgium. According to an American Mineral Fields press release, “In May 1996, America Mineral Fields entered into an agreement with IDAS Resources N.V. (“IDAS”) and IDAS shareholders, under which the Company may acquire 75.5% of the common shares of IDAS. In turn, IDAS has entered into a 50-50 joint venture agreement with Endiama, the Angola state mining company. The joint venture asset is a 3,700 km2 mining lease in the Cuango Valley, Luremo and a 36,000 km2 prospecting lease called the Cuango International, which borders the mining lease to the north. The total area is approximately the size of Switzerland.” [27]



America Mineral Fields directly benefited from America’s initial covert military and intelligence support for Kabila. It is my observation that America’s early support for Kabila, which was aided and abetted by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, had less to do with getting rid of the Mobutu regime than it had to do with opening up Congo’s vast mineral riches to North American-based and influenced mining companies. Presently, some of America Mineral Fields’ principals now benefit from the destabilization of Sierra Leone and the availability of its cut-rate “blood diamonds” on the international market. Also, according to the findings of a commission headed up by Canadian United Nations Ambassador, Robert Fowler, Rwanda has violated the international embargo against Angola’s UNITA rebels in allowing them “to operate more or less freely” in selling conflict zone diamonds and making deals with weapons dealers in Kigali.[28]



One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma faction, a group fighting the Kabila government in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc., of Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government’s “mining minister” signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999.[29] Among the members of Barrick’s International Advisory Board are former President Bush and former President Clinton’s close confidant Vernon Jordan. Currently, Barrick and tens of other mining companies are helping to stoke the flames of the civil war in the DRC. Each benefits by the de facto partition of the country into some four separate zones of political control. First the mineral exploiters from Rwanda and Uganda concentrated on pillaging gold and diamonds from the eastern Congo. Now, they have increasingly turned their attention to coltan.



It is my hope that the Bush administration will take pro-active measures to stem the conflict in the DRC by applying increased pressure on Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the country. However, the fact that President Bush has selected Walter Kansteiner to be Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, portends, in my opinion, more trouble for the Great Lakes region. A brief look at Mr. Kansteiner’s curriculum vitae and statements calls into question his commitment to seeking a durable peace in the region.



In an October 15, 1996, paper written by Mr. Kansteiner for the Forum for International Policy on the then-eastern Zaire, he called for the division of territory in the Great Lakes region “between the primary ethnic groups, creating homogenous ethnic lands that would probably necessitate redrawing international boundaries and would require massive ‘voluntary’ relocation efforts.” Kansteiner foresaw creating separate Tutsi and Hutu states after such a drastic population shift. It should be recalled that the creation of a Tutsi state in eastern Congo was exactly what Rwanda, Uganda and their American military advisers had in mind when Rwanda invaded then-Zaire in 1996, the same year Kansteiner penned his plans for the region. Four years later, Kansteiner was still convinced that the future
of the DRC was “balkanization” into separate states.



In an August 23, 2000, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, Kansteiner stated that the “breakup of the Congo is more likely now than it has been in 20 or 30 years.” Of course, the de facto break up of Congo into various fiefdoms has been a boon for U.S. and other western mineral companies. And I believe Kansteiner’s previous work at the Department of Defense where he served on a Task Force on Strategic Minerals - and one must certainly consider coltan as falling into that category—may influence his past and current thinking on the territorial integrity of the DRC. After all, 80 per cent of the world’s known reserves of coltan are found in the eastern
DRC. It is potentially as important to the U.S. military as the Persian Gulf region.



However, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, which have supported Uganda and Rwanda in their cross-border adventures in the DRC, have resisted peace initiatives and have failed to produce evidence of war crimes by the Ugandans and Rwandans and their allies in Congo.



The CIA, NSA, and DIA should turn over to international and congressional investigators intelligence-generated evidence in their possession, as well as overhead thermal imagery indicating the presence of mass graves and when they were dug. In particular, the NSA maintained a communications intercept station in Fort Portal, Uganda, which intercepted military and government communications in Zaire during the first Rwandan invasion. These intercepts may contain details of Rwandan and AFDL-CZ massacres of innocent Hutu refugees and other Congolese civilians during the 1996 invasion.



There must be a full accounting before the Congress by the staff of the U.S. Defense Attaché’s Office in Kigali and certain U.S. Embassy staff members in Kinshasa who served from early 1994 to the present time. As for the number of war casualties in the DRC since the first invasion from Rwanda in 1996, I would estimate, from my own research, the total to be around 1.7 to 2 million - a horrendous number by any calculation. And I also believe that although disease and famine were contributing factors, the majority of these deaths were the result of actual war crimes committed by Rwandan, Ugandan, Burundian, AFD-CZ, RCD, and military and paramilitary forces of other countries.



SUMMARY



It is beyond time for the Congress to seriously examine the role of the United States in the genocide and civil wars of central Africa, as well as the role that PMCs currently play in other African trouble spots like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Cabinda. Other nations, some with less than stellar records in Africa - France and Belgium, for example - have had no problem examining their own roles in Africa’s last decade of turmoil. The British Foreign Office is in the process of publishing a green paper on regulation of mercenary activity. At the very least, the United States, as the world’s leading democracy, owes Africa at least the example of a critical self-inspection. I appreciate the concern shown by the Chair and members of this committee in holding these hearings.



Thank you.



Notes:
[1] Lewiston, NY and Lampeter, Wales, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.



[2] Colum Lynch, “U.S. agents were seen with rebels in Zaire: Active
participation is alleged in military overthrow of Mobutu,” BOSTON GLOBE, 8
October 1997, A2.



[3] Ibid.



[4] Ibid.



[5] David Rieff, “Realpolitik in Congo: should Zaire’s fate have been
subordinate to the fate of Rwandan refugees?” THE NATION, 7 July 1997.



[6] Georges Berghezan, “Une guerre cosmopolite,” (“A cosmopolitan war,”),
Marc Schmitz and Sophie Nolet, editors, Kabila prend le pouvoir (“Kabila
Takes Power) (Paris: Editions GRIP, 1998), 97.



[7] André Dumoulin, La France Militaire et l’Afrique (The French Military
and Africa) (Paris: Éditions GRIP, 1997), 87.



[8] “Fighting with the rebels,” ASIA TIMES, 1 April 1997, 8; Jacques
Isnard, “Des ‘conseillers’ américains ont aidé à renverser le régime de M.
Mobutu” (“American advisers helped to oust the regime of Mr. Mobutu”), Le
Monde, 28 August 1997; “Influence americaine” (“American influence”), La
Lettre du Continent, 3 April 1997.



[9] Dana Priest, “Pentagon Slow to Cooperate With Information Requests,”
THE WASHINGTON POST, 31 December 1998, A34.



[10] Christian Jennings, “U.S. plane seeks “missing” refugees in east
Zaire,” Reuters North American Wire, 26 November 1996.



[11] Lynch, op. cit.



[12] Hubert Condurier, “Ce que les services secrets français savaient”
(“What the French Secret Services Knew”), VALEURS ACTUELLES, 30 August
1997, 26 27.



[13] “Priests Speak of Massacres, Destitution,” All Africanews...

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Friday, November 20, 2009

Pierre Péan and Prince Antoine Nyetera Highlight ADAD Conference

Pierre Péan and Prince Antoine Nyetera Highlight ADAD Conference
Two of the highlights of this weekend's Conference of ICTR Defense attorneys in The Hague were the French investigative writer, Pierre Péan, author of the magnificent history of the Rwandan counter-revolution (1990-1994), "Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs," and the Tutsi Prince, Antoine Nyetera, the source of Péan's controversial four-page aria on the Rwandan (Tutsi) culture of the lie (known in Kinyarwanda as ubwenge) at the very beginning (pp 41-44) of his 500+page tome. One or the other or both of them smartly pointed out that the 'culture of the lie' is characteristic to all irrational, anti-democratic, neofeudal, monarchic, minoritarian--in a word, Fascist--political cultures. The ruling minority, in constant fear of being turned out by the masses they exploit for their privileges, always play it fast and loose with the Truth, with History, with Reality. And if you have a problem with that fact, then you're probably a neofeudal nostalgic, a cringing anti-democrat, a wincing Czarist, a putrid piece of Nazi scum.

Péan's book came out in 2005 at about the same time that journalist Stephen Smith leaked in Le Monde the report of French anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière's investigation into the 6 April 1994 missile strike against the Rwandan presidential jet that cost the lives of two democratically elected African heads of state, Presidents Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, their entourages, the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army, Déogratias Nsabimana, and the three-man French flight crew, Jacky Heraud (pilot), Jean-Pierre Minaberry (co-pilot), and Jean-Marc Perrine (flt engineer), the three French nationals whose families instigated the Bruguière investigation.

Bruguière not only found Paul Kagame and his RPF, currently the governing power in Rwanda and the darlings of American clerico-fascism, to be responsible for the 6 April terrorist attack on the Presidents' plane--a terrorist attack and not simply an act of war, as Paul Kagame would like to have it, because it took place while the Arusha Peace Accords of 3 August 1993, to which both the Habyarimana government and Kagame's RPF were signatory, were in place--but his investigation also traced the RPF's involvement in the liquefactionist destruction of the Rwandan revolution back to its 1 October 1990 invasion from Uganda, under the banner, using the arms, personnel and materiel of the Ugandan National Resistance Army (NRA), through a four-year reign of terror, the double presidential assassination and the subsequent bloody nationwide military offensive it triggered, unto the 1996-1998 invasions of Eastern Congo with their loss of innocent non-combattant lives now in the multi-millions and climbing everyday.

In the time-tested tradition of The Holocaust Industry, where with each military onslaught comes a parallel propaganda blitz keyed to the issue of the minority Tutsi genocide: from the Rwandan Social Revolution of 1959, where the Hutu majority overthrew colonially-supported, neofeudal Tutsi minority, to the ravaging of the Hutu refugee camps in Congo, the rationale has always been couched in a Human Rights defense of the Tutsis against genocide or against 'the ideology of genocide.' So when Judge Bruguière's report came out charging the Tutsi 'rebels' of the RPF with doing the bulk of the killing in Central Africa, and the Hutu majority making up the majority of the victims, Rwandan President Paul Kagame's reflex was to break off diplomatic relations with France, claiming the judge's report was politically motivated and an attempt to hide France's key role in planning and preparing the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the one-hundred days between 6 April and 16 July 1994.

The initial 2008 civil suit brought by SOS-Racisme against Péan, one of the organization's founders and a long-time patron, and his editor, Claude Durand, seems part of this Holocaust Industry-like subterfuge for attempting damage control. Last November the Paris court acquitted Péan and Durand. But immediately the plaintiffs filed what is, here in France, called 'an appeal,' but what seems to someone who's only played a couple of lawyers on TV like double jeopardy.

So here is the AP story on Péan's recent re-acquittal that we translated from the French:












Pierre Péan acquitted a second time on charges of provoking racial discrimination
AP | 18.11.2009 | 16:16

The writer Pierre Péan was acquitted for a second time Wednesday (18/11/09), on charges of provoking racial discrimination in his book on the Rwandan genocide, "Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs" ["Black Fury, White Liars"--though no English version yet exists--nb], published in 2005. "It is a victory for freedom of expression," said his lawyer Florence Bourg. His editor, Claude Durand, was also acquitted.

"I'm very pleased with this decision, which is in keeping with the rule of law. There was no criminal intention on Pierre Péan's part, and he did not incite racial hatred," 'Maitre Bourg said. "'Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs' is, above all, a political analysis."

For the court, there was no defamation or incitement to racial hatred on the part of the writer. The Court of Appeals in Paris decided, as did the court in the first trial last year, that Pierre Péan and his editor did not promote racist thought. The complaint had called for them to be condemned for racial hatred.

SOS-Racisme had filed its complaint in October 2006, charging Péan with having written that the Tutsis resorted to lies and dissimulation or were masters of manipulation, the writer sometimes citing other authors in the pages in question.

In the first trial, Pierre Péan was acquitted of the two most important charges, "complicity in racial defamation" and "complicity in the provocation of racial discrimination."

The lawyer for SOS-Racisme, Lef Forster, said that the plaintiffs are going to file yet another appeal with the French Supreme Court.

As with the first trial, the court dismissed the countersuit by Péan and his editor against SOS-Racisme for "abusive persecution." --AP

***************************************

But this time out the Human Rights and Holocaust Industrialists brought some stronger shit into the game. Elie Wiesel, the renowned survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, who fled Auschwitz only to follow his Fascist tormentors back into Germany and await Western allied liberation at an abandoned Buchenwald, rather than be sprung in Poland by the Red Army, weighed in against Péan--in a case he seemed painfully unfamiliar with--by charging the writer with failing to 'privilege the victims' truth' in his recounting of the mass killings in Rwanda, which The Wiesel would liken to The Shoah.--in what the French would call an 'amalgame.' So it turns out that the HI's stronger shit is really pretty weak.

Péan's response to The Wiesel's intimations of revisionism or negationism is worth taking a good look at:


The Péan Trial/RWANDA

Rwanda: Pierre Péan answers Elie Wiesel

His actions called into question by the Nobel [Peace] laureate in the midst of the civil trial over his book dedicated to the Rwandan genocide, Pierre Péan sent us the following letter:

“What an honor for a writer to arouse a response from a Nobel Peace Prize winner!

Did he write his article a few hours before the beginning of my trial so as to influence French Justice? Such would not be worthy of him. In fact, I’d like to believe that, despite what he wrote, he has not really read my book, “Noire fureurs, blancs menteurs,” and that that is why he caricatured it as “Morally deplorable and historically regrettable.”

For those readers who would not know my book except for Elie Wiesel’s critique, I will straight away point out that I was acquitted by the court of these same charges of racial defamation and incitement to racial hatred, brought by SOS-Racisme, after the first trial. The action was brought because of a few sentences, found on pages 41 to 44 of my 500-page book, which were part of a quick political history of Rwanda since the beginning of the 20th century: I wrote these pages with Antoine Nyetera, a Tutsi descendant of the royal family.

Elie Wiesel distorts my intentions by looking to capture the whole book in a single sentence: “The Tutsi chiefs were responsible for their own catastrophic downfall, which they, then, called genocide.”

Why speak in the plural of ‘Tutsi chiefs,’ when it is a political organization, the RPF, equipped with its own armed forces, that I am charging?

I acknowledge that Paul Kagame, at that time the leader of the RPF, is responsible for the attack of 6 April 1994 against Juvénal Habyarimana, the legitimate president of Rwanda. But, today, the whole world knows that this act of war was what triggered the genocide. Because of this, Kagame bears an important part of the responsibility for the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis.

Since my book came out in 2005, [French anti-terrorist] judge [Jean-Louis] Bruguière and Spanish judge [Fernando] Andreu Merelles, have likewise determined that the criminal responsibility for this terrorist act lies with the current Rwandan dictator. The Spanish judge has even issued 40 arrest warrants against Kagame’s inner circle charging them with the crime of genocide.

Elie Wiesel speaks of his experiences in The Shoah. But, these two historical calamities, the WWII Jewish Holocaust and the genocide of the Tutsis, have nothing to do with one another, and cannot be compared. It is the RPF that, on 1 October 1990, crossed into Rwanda from Uganda and, with 7,000 Tutsi rebel troops, pushed to within a few miles of Kigali: War was declared against the Habyarimana regime. After four years of military hostilities, after the genocide of the Tutsis and the mass slaughter of the Hutus, it is Paul Kagame who took state power in Kigali.

“The victims’ truth deserves to be privileged,” says Elie Wiesel. But Paul Kagame is not a victim, and the ‘truth’ that he would impose on the world is a grotesque affront to the memory of the victims. I respect the comparison that Elie Wiesel makes between these victims because it is grounded in his memory of The Shoah, but this comparison is not sufficient for seeking after and discerning the truth.

The story of the Rwandan tragedy has not yet been written; I believe I have made a modest contribution, especially by noting that the Tutsis were not the only victims, that there were also hundreds of thousands of Hutu victims.

All the victims deserve our respect and our compassion. To cry only for the Tutsi victims is “morally deplorable and historically regrettable.”

Pierre Péan

**************************

But the kicker in this whole story--and the major clear moment at last weekend's Conference in The Hague--was when Prince Antoine Nyetera testified that the greatest act of racism in the entire Péan case was when SOS-Racsime went after the European Jew, Péan, instead of his source, the African Jewish nobleman, Nyetera. (My amalgame, The Economist called the Tutsis the "Jews of Africa.")

And though I am sure we have not heard the last of Kagame and his HI/HR/Liberal/STFG minions--even with the recent spate of reversals of RPF fortunes in ICTR cases, like the acquittals on genocide charges of Fr. Hormisdas Nsengimana; of Protais Zigiranyirazo, the martyred President Habyarimana's brother-in-law whose acquittal also exploded the whole Akazu (Little House) myth of the late President's inner circle and family plotting his assassination to trigger the genocide of the Tutsis; while both these rulings followed on the extraordinary Military I judgement of December 2008 (published in February 2009) in which the 'brains of the genocide,' Colonel Theoneste Bagosora and his three co-defendants were found not guilty of any conspiracy or planning in the Tutsi genocide of 1994: it is becoming more and more apparent that the ICTR's continuing service as a mosquito net protecting the expansionist military interests in Africa of the US, the UK and Israel, is rapidly being obviated by the intense shredding of the false history and outright lies from which it was spun that is currently being carried out by the courageous and commited lawyers of ADAD and its support network--to which we here at CM/P are proud to belong. --mc

Saturday, November 14, 2009

History Will Judge the ICTR - by Bernard Lugan

KKKarla by Duci Simonovic



The black dog in front is Zoran Djindjic. In the time when I made the poster he was alive.
The dog down with the mustache is the (Djindjic’s) police chief Mihajlovic.
The dog with the big nose is the (Dj…) minister of justice Batic.
The dog with the glasses is the (Dj…) minister for Kosovo Covic.
The dog who is fucking Covic is one of lieder of Albanian UCK Hashim Taschi.

History Will Judge the ICTR -- by Bernard Lugan
[So, I’m on the train to The Hague for this Conference thrown by the Defense Lawyers at the ICTR in Arusha, and this at the very moment that The General’s case is winding to a close--or so one hopes. I’ve just finished six-weeks’ work translating an extraordinary book by the former-Rwandan Ambassador to France, Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana: ‘How General Paul Kagame Sacrificed the Tutsis.’ And, with still a slight jones from watching the Situation Room at midnight over the top of my MacBook, my face full of French and my head full of English writerly affectations, I decided I’d just get right back on to translating this Lugan piece about how History will judge the ICTR. Bernard Lugan is a French scholar who’s done a passel of good writing on Central Africa.

If you make it past this intro and actually read the Lugan article, I’m betting you won’t be able to stop scratching your head as to just how and why these ad hocs (primarily the ICTR and ICTY, though there are a bunch more now, like for Sierra Leone and Lebanon) are still standing. The original idea of International Justice was--as Ramsey Clark put it Saturday morning at the Conference--to limit power in pursuit of Truth and Justice in bringing an end to intra-State violence. But since these Tribs were the extra-legal spawn of the UN Security Council and, in practice, are so undisciplined, so unscrupulous, so judicially unethical and immoral in any human sense, that they have gone quite a ways in turning their putative purposes inside out and upside down. In fact, these two wings of the Western Vulture Culture (feeding on that smoldering putrescence left by the Globalization Hawks), can really only maintain a light-operatic gentility while continuing to lay waste to the rights, unto the very lives, of the superfluous (i.e., powerless) peoples of planet earth.

When the ICTY made the mistake of trying Slobodan Milosevic for whatever they thought they could get on him--and, of course, this changed from month to month, from amended indictment to amended indictment, until in desperation over ever being able to convict him of anything, they just had to have him murdered in his cell--the Yugoslav President characterized his Tribunal tormentors as ‘a farce.’ Way too kind, you ask me, considering what this ‘farce’ did to him, his family, his party and his country.

Currently in the box in The Hague, Dr Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, had a take that was a little more along the lines of what I’ve always felt about these Gilbert ‘n’ Sullivan Guignols: Dr. Seselj, charged primarily with Hate Speech, whatever that means, said simply, “This Tribunal can suck my dick!”

But the Conference--and this post--are not primarily about Yugoslavia--though the two wars, the two Tribunals are as inseparable as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dummer. (The ICTR and ICTY share the same appeals chamber--like in a cheap hotel--and that’s the appeals chamber that told the ICTR that they should take ‘judicial notice’ of the Rwandan genocide: meaning they should recognize it as a natural fact of Jesus, even if they can’t prove it!).

Lugan, like so many ‘experts’ seems pretty careless about what he knows and what he thinks we know. He gets names wrong (he has ‘Harbour’ for ‘Arbour’)--or maybe he’s just being anecdotal here, sketchy--but, hey, I don’t wanna nit-pick, piss off another ‘expert’--so let me just fill in a few spaces he left when it came to The General’s case--that’s General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie during the troubles, whose back we’ve had here at CM/P for some time now.

Sure, the Tribs are all about false witnesses giving scripted and rehearsed testimony as part of some plea deal with the DAs in Arusha or Kigali--and the rules of evidence and procedure (like the bad Joint Criminal Enterprise joke) are pretty much cooked down to allow the Prosecutor, who is indistinguishable from the Court, which is indistinguishable from NATO (which is indistinguishable from al Qaeda), to have it his way without breaking a sweat. But to be complicit in this shit, to dignify this grotesquery with your participation, is not without lethal side effects--Milosevic turned out so many prosecution witnesses in his court that Judge Richard May got brain cancer and died. So to see all these Canadian shysters in Arusha actually organize to fight against the essential injustice at the stinking heart of International Justice is a singularly gratifying surprise.

But more on the ADAD Conference anon (post hoctor proct, as Maitres Derek and Clive would have it)--after I recule my cul back to Paris. For now let Chris and Bernard Lugan have the parole:

Chris Black:

The latest development in the trial is the episode re the recanting prosecution witness, GFR. I can't remember if I told you. GFR was a major witness against The General re alleged crimes committed by gendarmes in his home town, including an allegation that they took part in a massacre at Kansi Parish church.

GFR contacted me by letter the day we made our oral argument, stating he wanted to recant as he had been forced to lie by the regime (he had escaped from prison in Rwanda and fled to Burundi). I raised it in court and asked for a meeting with the judges about what to do, as I knew if I raised it in court without seeing the judges first, the prosecutor would accuse me of fabricating the letter.

So I gave it to the judges in chambers with the prosecutor present. The prosecutor quickly accused me of fabricating the letter and being in cahoots with the witness. The judges, who have been fairly sympathetic to us the last year or so, rejected that suggestion and told me I could raise it in court, read the letter openly, so it is on the record, and ask for a remedy. They told the prosecutor that he could say what he wanted, but when I asked for a remedy they were going to do something.

So in open court I stood up, said this and that, read the letter and demanded that it be admitted as an exhibit, and that the judges throw out GFR's testimony and call for an investigation into how Rwanda fabricates witnesses and the prosecution’s role in it.

The Prosecutor accused me of fabricating the whole thing.

The Judges told me to file a written motion asking for a remedy. I did. The Prosecutor replied that I better be careful as an investigation could lead to my arrest. I protested that threat. The Judges reprimanded the prosecutor for those remarks.

The judges then appointed in August an amicus curiae to try to contact GFR and see if he really wrote the letter and if he was telling the truth about its contents. That lawyer did meet with GFR in Burundi in mid-September and filed his report which we were finally given in late October.

He confirmed that in his opinion GFR was truthful and that GFR explained how he had been forced to lie against The General on threat of death and that one of the ICTR prosecution lawyers knew about this and he gave the name.

The Judges then asked what I wanted, so I asked that his testimony be thrown out and that they do the same with the entire group of witnesses from that town as they were all linked and that they consider a deeper investigation. However, that could take years and I don’t want The General rotting in prison until that takes place, so I asked that if they call for an investigation he be released on bail. If not, then to just throw out the charges related to that witness (they are the worst charges against him). We are waiting for their decision.

--mc]

And here’s Bernard Lugan:


The ICTR Faces the Judgement of History

by Bernard Lugan
Expert witness before the ICTR
From B. Lugan's official Blog


To a professional historian the methods of the ICTR are unacceptable for at least six important reasons:

--Its refusal to consider the evolution of knowledge
--Its obstinate refusal to investigate the attack of 6 April 1994
--The unethical manipulations of the Prosecution
--Its resort to false witnesses
--Its suppression of witnesses for the defense and its rejection of evidence benefitting the defense
--Its violation of the neutrality principle



1-Its refusal to consider the evolution of knowledge

At no time has the Prosecution considered the new facts that have
developed over the course of the Tribunal's existence. Quite the contrary,
it remains grounded, even mired, in by-now obsolete assumptions, based
primarily on Alison Des Forges, the Prosecution's expert whose constant
parti pris, pseudo scientific presentation, confused reasoning and fuzzy
methodology have allowed the Prosecution to construct a false history of
the genocide from which the Tribunal's judgements have been rendered.

Compared to what we knew right after the assassination of President
Habyarimana, what new knowledge do we have in 2009, 15 years later and
never considered by the ICTR?

-The attack of 6 April 1994 that took the life of Rwandan President
Habyarimana was not carried out by so-called 'Extremist Hutus,' but
rather by the Tutsi leadership of the faction currently in power in Rwanda
(Bruguière 2006; Merelles 2008)

-Between 1991 and 1994, several important so-called 'moderate' Hutus,
notably Félicien Gatabazi and Emmanuel Gapyisi, were assassinated,
which, at that time, brought on the condemnation and sanctioning of the
Habyarimana regime, accused of having ordered these crimes. But,
these murders were also carried out on the orders of the clique currently
in power in Kigali. The investigations of French judge Jean Louis
Bruguière (2006) and Spanish judge Fernando Andreu Merelles (2008)
have even yielded the names of the shooters, the drivers of the vehicles
and motorcycles, etc., used in these attacks.

-In 1991 and 1992, dozens of blind attacks (mines, grenades, etc.,)
exacerbated ethnic hatred. When they happened they were credited
to President Habyarimana's henchmen, his famous 'death squads.'
Today, Judges Bruguière and Merelles contend that these attacks
were carried out by members of the RPF and that they were part of
a strategy of heightening tension to provoke sufficient chaos to allow
the RPF to seize power. (Bruguière, 2006; Merelles, 2008).

-The Interahamwe, whose name is associated with the Tutsi genocide,
was created by a Tutsi who later became a Minister in the government
of General Kagame (Anastase Gasana). The president of this militia in
Kigali (Robert Kajuga) was, himself, a Tutsi, as were many of those who
infiltrated important positions in the organization and who were later
made known to us by name and sometime by nickname. (Bruguière,
2006; Merelles, 2008).

-Trial after trial, in spite of all its efforts, the Prosecution of the ICTR was
unable to show that the genocide was programed, even if it did, in fact,
take place. With the accumulation of countervailing evidence, Alison
Des Forges was forced to admit that with the convoluted presentation of
events that had become her trademark, she was never able to prove the
intention to commit genocide:

"(. . .) everything about the existence of a clear plan, I don't have any
way, any method to establish that people who took part in this plan
had the intention to commit a genocide" (ICTR-97-31-T, Monday
5 March 2007, Des Forges)

In 2000, with a great sense of immediacy, the OAU (Organization of
African Unity) had this to say about this subject:

"(. . .) There is no document, no transcript of any meeting and no other
evidence that puts a finger on the precise moment when certain
individuals, within the cntext of an organized plan, decided to eliminate
the Tutsis (. . .) What we know (. . .) is that after 1 October 1990, Rwanda
went through three and a half years of violent anti-Tutsi incidents, any
one of which could have been interpreted in retrospect as a deliberate
stage of an elaborate conspiracy which would end up with the shooting
down of President Habyarimana's plane and the triggering of the
genocide. However, all these interpretations remain mere speculation.
No one knows who shot down the plane, no one can prove that the
innumerable demonstrations of anti-Tutsi sentiment over those years
were part of a grand diabolical plan." (OAU, report 2000, 7 January)

At no time has the Prosecution at the ICTR acknowledged these very
essential pieces of new information, and, quite to the contrary, it continued
to designate the so-called 'Extremist' Hutus as the only ones responsible
for this tragedy. While the indictment remains frozen in these outdated
assumptions, the defendants suffered and they continue to suffer through
a process that violates their rights while they are being tried for charges
that are now obsolete.


2- Its refusal to investigate the attack of 6 April 1994 against the life of then
Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana that is the origin of everything . . .

The ICTR has constantly claimed and tried to make us believe that the
attack of 6 April 1994 and the genocide that it led to are unconnected.

With the exception of the 8-year investigation led by French anti-terrorist
judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, there has been no inquiry into this international
terrorist act which was the spark that set off the genocide. On the other hand,
it is possible to demonstrate constant obstruction to the search for the truth
by the UN as well as by the ICTR.
A review of some dates and other facts is necessary here:
.
-On 7 April 1994, the day after the attack that cost the lives of two sitting
heads of state, the President of the UN Security Council invited the
Secretary General of the United Nations to gather all relevant information
concerning this terrorist act and to compile a detailed report on it for the
Security Council.
-The Secretary General's response was silence. So, on 21 April 1994,
the Security Council once again asked the UN Secretary General to
deliver to it all the information on the subject of this attack, but again
without success.
-On 27 May 1994, the Security Council reiterated its earlier demands, and
once again received no satisfaction.
-On 28 June 1994, Mr. René Degni Segui, UN Special Envoy to Rwanda,
admitted that the attack of 6 April was most certainly the cause of the dramatic
events that followed, that is, of the genocide. But after he demanded the
formation of an investigatory commission, he was told that the UN did not
have the budget for that..
-Nevertheless, in the Autumn of 1994, a commission of experts submitted
a report to the UN Secretary General demanding the creation of an
International Tribunal whose mission would be "to investigate, among
other things, the events that led to the current situation, especially the attack
on the airplane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda."


Effectively created on 8 November 1994 by UN Security Council Resolution
955, with authority over events between 1 January and 31 December 1994,
to judge the alleged organizers of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the ICTR
(International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) was set up in Arusha, Tanzania.

So the attack of 6 April 1994 is unquestionably included within the
time-window of the Tribunal's authority. Yet, with great consistency, the
ICTR has refused to investigate this attack. However, in February 1997,
certain evidence gathered by ICTR investigators working in Kigali, Michael
Hourigan chief among them, established the responsibility of the RPF in this
attack.

These investigators were acting under the authority of the ICTR Chief Prosecutor
Mme Louise Arbour who, at that time, considered the attack against the Rwandan
president's plane to be well within the authority of the ICTR.

On 1 August 1997, a report establishing the responsibility of the RPF in
the attack of 6 April 1994 was submitted to the ICTR, which did not
follow-up on it. The existence of this document was disclosed in March
2000 by a Canadian newspaper. Forced to react, on 27 March 2000,
UN Legal Services acknowledged the reality of this report, specifying
that it had been directly sent to the Chief Justice of the ICTR in Arusha.

The ICTR refused to furnish this document to Judge Bruguière who was
investigating the attack of 6 April 1994:

--"(Considering) That an international rogatory letter was delivered
on 23 May 2000 to the authorities of the I.C.T.R. requesting a
copy of this report and of the ‘internal memorandum’ that was
sent to Mme Louise ARBOUR; and
That though Madame Navanethem PILAY, President of the Tribunal,
let it be known in response to this judicial inquiry that she, in fact,
was in possession of the document in question, she said it was
impossible for her to respond favorably to the French request;"--
(the Report of Jean-Louis Bruguière, The Superior Court of Paris,
17 November 2006, ¶s 123 & 124, CM/P translation at
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/30/3262522.html)--


Fortunately for the progress of the investigation, the 'Hourigan Report' got
to Judge Bruguière despite the letter of refusal from the ICTR:

--"(. . .) on 31 August 2000, the Court of Paris, on the instructions of the
Minister of Justice, passed on a copy of said report, which was attached
to the current with a view toward its future use; and
That the documents thus sent by the Court of Paris were authenticated
by Mr Michael HOURIGAN, (. . .) at the time of his testimony in Paris on
29 December 2000;"--
(the Report of Jean-Louis Bruguière, The Superior Court of Paris,
17 November 2006, ¶s 125 & 126, CM/P translation at
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/30/3262522.html)--

Mr. Hourigan gave very important information to Judge Bruguière:

--"(. . .) with regard to his mission for the I.C.T.R., Michael HOURIGAN
stated that the investigators on his team, empowered by their superiors
to investigate the attack, considered themselves to be entering a field
of inquiry within the authority of the Tribunal, never found any tangible
evidence implicating the Hutu extremists, but, on the contrary, were
drawn to an evidentiary trail leading directly to the R.P.F.;
(. . .) That on a secure telephone line from the U.S. Embassy in Kigali,
he had, on or about 7 March 1997, a conversation with Madame Louise
ARBOUR and that in the course of their exchange she told him that she
had received, through other channels, intelligence that backed up his own
and that at no time had she told him that the investigation into the attack
was not within the authority of the I.C.T.R.;"--
(the Report of Jean-Louis Bruguière, The Superior Court of Paris,
17 November 2006, ¶s 129 & 133, CM/P translation at
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/30/3262522.html)--

Later under questioning by Judge Bruguière, Michael Hourigan stated
that Mme Arbour had, at that time, suddenly changed her opinion. Contrary
to what she had told Hourigan before, Arbour now criticized him for having
conducted his investigation, which, she said was outside the authority of the
ICTR, and then she told him to break off all relations with his informants.
This position was confirmed by at least one other investigator.
(the Report of Jean-Louis Bruguière, The Superior Court of Paris,
17 November 2006, pp 22 in Fr original, CM/P translation at
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/30/3262522.html)--


A decade earlier, on 7 February 1997, Maitre Tiphaine Dickson, the
defense lawyer for Georges Rutaganda at his trial before the ICTR,
made a request that bench order the Prosecutor to make public all
the evidence that he had on the subject of the attack against the
president's plane, as well as to initiate an investigation on this subject.
The response she received was, in its own way, stupefying:

--"Our responsibility is not to conduct an investigation into a plane crash (sic!!!),
this is not our job. So, I am going, in the most categorical way, to set this
question aside. And, first of all, I will say that we don't have to conduct such
investigations, we don't have to report on such investigations either.
Secondly, it is not our role, it is not our mission to conduct investigations
into the crash (sic!!!) of a plane carrying some presidents or vice-presidents.
This question does not fall within our authority."--
(ICTR 96-3-T, Prosecutor v Rutaganda, 7 February 1997).


In December 1999, without fear of contradiction, and completely turning
the truth inside out, the Prosecutor, Mme Carla Del Ponte, stated with
serene confidence:

--"If the Tribune doesn't do anything about it (the attack), it is because it
does not have jurisdiction in the matter. It is quite true that this is the
event that triggered everything. But as such, the act of attacking an
airplane and killing the president does not fall within the articles that
define our jurisdiction."--

So, if we follow Mme Del Ponte's reasoning, everything that contributed to
the 'preparation' of the genocide is within the authority of the ICTR, but not
the attack, itself, which, she tells us, is the 'event that triggered it all,' and
that she, furthermore, considers one of the elements in the planning of
the genocide.
Special justice allows the taking of liberties with logic, history and, especially,
the law. . . .


3- The Prosecution and its manipulations

Captain Innocent Sagahutu, who commanded Squadron A of the
Reconnaissance Battalion (Recce) of the old Rwandan Army (FAR), is a
prisoner of the United Nations being held in Arusha since February 2000
because of an incredible manipulation by the Prosecutor. In his indictment
dated 20 January 2000, the Prosecution wrote, in effect, that Capt. Sagahutu
was the 'second in command' of the Reconnaissance Battalion (Recce).
that due to this fact he had authority over the whole battalion, and that he
was thus responsible for all crimes committed by any of the members of
this unit.

The improbability of such a charge did not escape the Court which:

--"(. . .) invited the Prosecutor to verify the official post he (Capt. Sagahutu)
occupied in the Reconnaissance Battalion of the Rwandan Army at the
time of the facts in the case and failed to correct the information provided
in the indictment. (ICTR-Decision of 25 September 2002, ¶ 30)--

But, in the modified indictment of 23 August 2004, the Prosecutor did
not follow the orders of the Court, and even dared to write the following
lines:

--"At the time of the events cited in the present indictment, Innocent Sagahutu
was assigned as the second in command of the Reconnaissance Battalion
(Recce) of the Rwandan Army and was responsible for Company A of said
battalion. He held the rank of Captain. In his position as second in command
of the Reconnaissance Battalion or in his duties, Innocent Sagahutu was
given authority over every unit of the battalion."--
(ICTR-00-56-1, Modified Indictment, 23 August 2004, ¶s 11 & 12).

Not having verified if Captain Sagahutu was, or was not, "the second in
command" of the Reconnaissance Battalion known as Recce, the Prosecutor
maintained his suppositions, even adding, peremptorily, the qualification
"or in his duties." But, the Prosecutor added, in a totally and intrinsically
fantastic way, that the duties of the "second in command" assigned to
Capt. Sagahutu were mentioned only as a way to save an indictment
from perdition because of its total disconnect with the facts.


It is painful to have to mention that the Prosecutor did not even make the
effort to verify the grounds for his accusations when he had in his possession
the official documents that indicated the innocence of the defendant, in this
case, the schedule of postings of the officers of the Rwandan Army in
1 January 1993 and 1 March 1994, a document that was not unknown to him
because it is referred to by the ICTR as K0078420-K0078512. But, this
document shows that "the second in command" did not exist within the FAR,
and neither did the "officers performing these duties," other than for some
duly specified exceptions, none of which exist in the present case.

So the Prosecutor not only hid the evidence that would acquit the
defendant, but even more, he invented and promoted the opposite with
full knowledge of what he was doing. Before any other court but the ICTR,
we could be talking here about a mistrial with all that that implies.


4- Its resort to false witnesses

The witnesses at the ICTR come in large part from Rwanda where they
are imprisoned or 'free,' but always held accountable for their statements
and their testimony when they return to Kigali. So their honesty is subject
to question.

One example among many will illustrate my point: heard in closed session
by the ICTR, an anonymous witness for the prosecution who is identified as
"XXQ" stated under oath that on 15 February 1994, at 10 am, Colonel--today
General--Gratien Kabiligi (ICTR-97-34), came to Ruhengeri by helicopter on
orders from the Operations Section, and that he presided over a meeting
there, telling those officers present that the "genocide had to begin on 23
February 1994 and everywhere in Rwanda at the same time (. .)."

Throughout this testimony, the Prosecution reinforced its assumption which
is, let's remember, that the genocide was programmed and that the
assassination of President Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, that is, less than
two months later, had nothing to do with it.

Since the ICTR works on the Anglo-Saxon system of Common Law, no
examining judge, in pre-trial, to accuse or acquit, or to 'weed out' the
fantasists or the liars, before testimony is admitted; but this was an
actual instance of a false witness.

Testifying before the ICTR, Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal, former commander
of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) section in
Kigali, explained that:

--conforming to the Arusha Accords and the agreement for the Arms
Consignment Zone in Kigali, the FAR's helicopters were at that time placed
under the control of UNAMIR in the hangars at the International Airport at
Kanombe. Under 24-hour surveillance, they were disarmed and their
weapons were stocked in separate hangars;--

--every flight plan was submitted for strict and obligatory authorization to
the UNAMIR which could then warn the RPF that the flight was authorized
and for a very good reason. But, with supporting documents, Col. Marchal
demonstrated that on 15 February 1994, no flights took place and that,
consequently, Col. Kabiligi could not have gone to Ruhengeri by helicopter;--

--furthermore, on this day, 15 February 1994, Col. Kabiligi could not
have physically been in Ruhengeri because of what had just taken
place in Kigali, the inspection of the Belgian contingent of UNAMIR
by Lt. General Uttyerhoven, Inspector for the Belgian Army on a special
mission from Europe. But, between 10 am and 3.30 pm, Col. Kabiligi
took part in the whole inspection, which brought this from Col. Marchal:--

-- --"I can confirm to you that on this day and at the hour that you have
mentioned, Colonel, now General Kabiligi was in my presence."
(ICTR-98-41-T, Marchal, 20 November 2006, p. 14.)-- --

So, "XXQ" gave false testimony. Sure, General Kabiligi was eventually
acquitted, but he spent 10 years in prison on the strength of this testimony
which was unverified by the ICTR, but so useful to the Prosecutor.


5- Witnesses for the defense are disqualified and evidence for acquittal
is rejected. . .

Before the ICTR, it often happens that witnesses for the defense are
disqualified and that evidence for acquittal is rejected. The case of
Ndindabahizi (ICTR-2001-71-T) is indicative in this regard because
it presents several properly hallucinatory examples.

Emmanuel Ndindabahizi, Finance Minister of the GIR (Interim Government
of Rwanda) was charged with genocide and murder. At his trial, the
Prosecutor presented 14 witnesses accusing him. The "honesty" of 11
of them being considered questionable, the judges removed them straight
away and only three witnesses for the prosecution were kept, and it is only
on their testimony that Emmanuel Ndindabahizi was convicted.

These three anonymous witnesses, whose code names were CGY, CGN
and CGC, began by stating that they knew the accused very well because
he was the manager of the Trafipro peasants' cooperative store in Kibuye.
CGM added that he knew Emmanuel Ndindabahizi in 1966-67 as a teacher
in Nyarutovu. But, as was established, Emmanuel Ndindabahizi was never
the manager of a Trafipro store and also never a teacher. . . . A 'normal' court
would have understood from the evidence that it was in the presence of
'dubious' witnesses, but the trial chamber at ICTR where Emmanuel
Ndindabahizi was tried could not disqualify them for the simple reason that
with 11 other witnesses already having been disqualified, the Prosecutor
might well have found himself completely empty handed. And without
prosecution witnesses, how do you continue to develop the case against
the accused?

But the most incredible is still to come. The jurisprudence of the ICTR allows
non-corroborated witnesses to be accepted, and so it is only on the testimony
of CGY that Emmanuel Ndindabahizi was found guilty of genocide on the hill
at Gitwa on 23 April 1994, and only on the testimony of CGC that he was found
guilty of murdering one Mr. Nors, a mixed race Belgian Rwandan.

But, in another trial before the ICTR, involving the same Prosecutor,
Me Philips Adeogun, the witness CGY stated under oath that no massacre
took place on the hill at Gitwa between 20 and 26 April 1994. In the
Ndindabahizi trial, once again under questioning by Prosecutor Philips
Adeogun, and still under oath, CGY calmly confirmed that Emmanuel
Ndindabahizi took part in the genocide of the Tutsis at Gitwa between
23 and 25 April 1994 and that he had witnessed it. These two suspect
testimonies were allowed by the Court to stand.

On the other hand, three witness for the defense were disqualified:

-the witness DC, sentenced to life in prison in Rwanda, totally exonerated
the defendant but the Court rejected his testimony.

-a Tutsi legislator who lost his family during the genocide in the region
where Emmanuel Ndindabahizi was supposed to have committed these
murders which had been investigated for a long time, questioned the
survivors and the inhabitants of the hill at Gitwa to know how, by whom
and where his loved ones had been massacred. Before the Court he
stated that the name of Ndindabahizi was never spoken by anyone he
interviewed. This testimony was not considered in the judgement.

-the witness DX, former investigator for the ICTR who had interrogated
Emmanuel Ndindabahizi before his arrest, declared to the bench that
Ndindabahizi was only charged because he refused to "make a deal"
with the ICTR. In reality, he declined "the offer" that the Prosecutor
made him to become a snitch for the ICTR in exchange for dropping
the charges against him. His testimony was rejected.


A document entitled "The Preliminary Report Identifying the Sites of the
Genocide and of the Massacres from April to July 1994" put out in February
1996 by the Rwandan Ministry Higher Education on Research in Science
and Culture, is used by the ICTR which has made of it a judicial notice
because it collects all the places where the genocide happened, the
number of victims and the names of the killers or those who ordered the
killings. The name of Emmanuel Ndindabahizi is nowhere in this report.
The Court refused to consider this fact as a means of defense for the
accused. But, at the same moment, this document was presented and
accepted as evidence for the prosecution in another trial, that of the
so-called "members of the government."

Before the ICTR, when the same document was presented by the
Prosecutor, it was accepted as evidence of guilt, but when it was
presented by the Defense, it was rejected.

Finally, regarding Emmanuel Ndindabahizi being charged with the
murder of Mr. Nors: the daughter of the murdered man testified before
the ICTR, claiming that Ndindabahizi had nothing to do with murder of
her father, who had been killed over a private disagreement by
someone named Nkubito, who was later tried and convicted of this
murder by the court in Kibuye, and has since died in prison. For the
sake of justice, the charges against Ndindabahizi should have been
dropped at this point, but nothing at all was done.

On 15 July 2004, the ICTR convicted Mr. Emmanuel Ndindabahizi and
sentenced him to life in prison for genocide on the hill at Gitwa and the
murder of Mr. Nors!!!


6- Its violation of the neutrality principle


On 23 November 2006, reacting to the Bruguière report's charges that
the RPF was responsible for the assassination of President Habyarimana,
Mr. O'Donnell, then the spokesman for the ICTR, was clearly out of his
realm when he claimed he had documents that proved the FAR was in
possession of SAM 16 missiles, something which was unbeknownst to
Judge Bruguière, and that, under these circumstances, the French judge
had been premature in his charging the RPF.

As Colonel Bagosora was accused by Mr. O'Donnell, on 25 November 2006,
his Defense team wrote to the Clerk of the Court to ask him to retract these
"erroneous and false" statements. On 30 November 2006, the Public Affairs
and Information Unit put out a less than subtle communiqué in which the
ICTR Administration acknowledged that their spokesman had repeated
information coming from the Prosecutor's office.
So, Mr. O'Donnell:

willfully 'tricked out' the reality of the evidence file, in hopes of limiting
the range and effects of the Bruguière Report, deliberately violated
the principle of neutrality to which he is sworn, and made the spokesman
a de facto member of the Prosecution's team.

But, these false claims should not have been made in any case. A little
more than a month before Mr. O'Donnell's unfortunate inventions, the
Tribunal had examined at great lengths the information to which he
alluded and that the Prosecution tried to pass off as evidence that the
FAR possessed SAM 16 missiles.

To understand this manipulation, it is important to have a sense of
the chronology:

-In the Summer of 1991, Col. Laurent Serubuga, Chief of Staff of the
Rwandan Army (FAR), asked the Egyptian government, which had
been a principal arms supplier to Rwanda, to send him a pro-forma
invoice for the eventual purchase of SAM 16 missiles.

-On 2 September 1991, the Egyptians sent this document to
Col. Serubuga.

-On 17 January, after having studied it thoroughly, Col. Serubuga sent
it to the Minister of Defense asking him to give it his approval.

-In April 1992, a coalition government led by the opposition to
President Habyarimana was put in place.

-In June, Col. Serubuga was replaced as Chief of Staff of the FAR by Col.
Déogratias Nsabinmana. The opposition government known as the
'Coalition,' and whose Prime Minister was Mr. Nsengiyaremye of the
MDR, did not follow-up on this request so as not to inconvenience the
RPF, on whom it was depending to defeat President Habyarimana.

So the record could not be clearer: there was no order, thus no purchase
and furthermore no delivery of the SAM 16 missiles by Egypt. So the FAR
did not have these anti-aircraft missiles, which was formally confirmed
before the ICTR by Belgian Col. Luc Marchal, at that time the Chief of the
UNAMIR section in Kigali and in charge of the inventory of confiscated
war materials from the FAR.
(ICTR-98-41-T, Marchal, 30 November 2006, p. 30).

Under such circumstances, how could Mr. O'Donnell have referred to
these documents? It was at the trial of Col. Bagosora that the Prosecutor
presented the pro-forma Egyptian invoice and the technical notes that
were annexed to it to be used against the defendant. He thus associated,
in a totally convoluted way, the name of Col. Bagosora to this file solely
because the defendant was at that time Commander of Camp Kanombe
and had full control of the anti-aircraft units of the FAR. The implication
was quite clear: the 'brains behind the genocide' had control over the
SAM 16 missiles bought from Egypt, so it was Col. Bagosora who shot
down President Habyarimana's plane. QED!

So the Prosecutor's argument rested on the manipulation of a pro-forma
invoice that he tried to pass off as an actual bill(!!!). In the face of such
enormous 'evidence tampering', the Tribunal was bound to react because
it would go to its credibility, and on 17 October 2006, it set aside all
responsibility on the part of Col. Bagosora in the attack against President
Habyarimana:

"No allegation implicating the Accused (Bagosora) in the
assassination of the President is to be found in the indictment, the
Pre-Trial Brief or any other Prosecution communication. Indeed, no
actual evidence in support of that allegation was heard during the
Prosecution case.” ( TPIR- Decision on Request for Disclosure and
Investigations Concerning the Assassination of President Habyarimana
(TC) 17 October 2006)

Before the Tribunal, the neutrality principle has been flouted, and there is
even, perhaps, a sort of understanding between the Prosecution, and the
ICTR's Communication Unit, that is, Mr. O'Donnell. Why would the
Prosecution and the ICTR's spokesman take such huge risks? The answer
is clear: the official thesis shared by the regime in Kigali and the Prosecution
at the ICTR is broken to bits because of the evolution of historiography. The
Prosecutor who saw, in session after session, his indictments dissolve like
popsicles in the desert sun, had no alternative strategy to shift to. He was left
totally without a case, which is why he resorted to the incoherences, the
evidence tampering and the manipulations of documents and facts like those
we have just entered into evidence.

The judgement of history will be very severe toward the ICTR. A half century
after the Stalinist trials in the USSR, we ought to be able to think that such
aberrations are no longer possible. Especially as the ICTR is a creature of the UN. . . .
The Stalinist Tribunals at least had the advantage over the ICTR of not being meant
to work for the 'reconciliation' of communities. . . . It is further legitimate to wonder if
such violations of the most elementary principle of the law, if such an absence of any
of the exigencies of the Scientific Method, would have taken place if the ICTR had
been trying Whites and not Blacks, and if the trials had not been held in Arusha, in
a veritable closed session to the media.

*****************************************


Bernard Lugan was an Expert Witness in the cases of Emmanuel Ndindabahizi
(ICTR-2001-71-T), Théoneste Bagosora (ICTR-98-41-T), Tharcisse Renzaho
(ICTR-97-31-I), Protais Zigiranyirazo. (ICTR-2001-73-T), Innocent Sagahutu
(ICTR-2000-56-T) , Augustin Bizimungu (ICTR- 2000-56-T). Commissioned
in the cases of Edouard Karemera (ICTR-98-44 I) et J.C Bicamumpaka.
(ICTR-99-50-T). A synthesis of these reports and work of the ICTR Bernard
Lugan (2007) Rwanda : Contre-enquête sur le génocide. Paris.

A. Des Forges was the Prosecution's Expert Witness in the trials of Akayezu (ICTR-
96-4-T), Gacumbitsi (ICTR- 01-64-T), MEDIA compiles the cases of
Nahimana Ferdinand (ICTR-96-11), Ngeze Hassan François (ICTR-97-27) and
Barayagwiza Jean Bosco (ICTR-97-19). In the case of Emmanuel
Ndindabahizi (ICTR- 01-71-T) , in the Butare trials Butare combining the cases of
Kanyabashi Joseph (ICTR-96-15),Ndayambaje Elie
( ICTR-96-8), Nsabimana Sylvain (ICTR-97-29), Ntahobali Arsène
(ICTR-99-21),Ntaziryayo Alphonse (ICTR-97-29) and Nyiramasuhuko Pauline
(ICTR-99-21), in the cases of Bizimungu Casimir (ICTR-99-45),
Mugenzi Justin (ICTR-99-47), Bicamumpaka Jérôme (ICTR-99-49),
Mugiraneza Prosper (ICTR-99-48), in the case known as MILITAIRES I
combining the cases of Colonel Bagosora Théoneste (ICTR-96-7) of Général
Kabiligi Gratien (ICTR-97-34), of Lt Colonel Nsengiyumva Anatole
(ICTR-96-12) and of Major Ntabakuze Aloys (ICTR-97-30), as well as in the cases of
Rwamakuba, (ICTR- 98-44-T) and Renzaho (ICTR- 97-31-I).
Bruguière J-L ( 2006) Judgement of Jean-Louis Bruguière, Tribunal de
Grande Instance de Paris, Paris, 17 November 2006.

But only the Hutus were tried while the ICTR constantly refused to go after
the Tutsis, beginning with those who are known to have ordered or executed
various crimes and attacks some of which have been noted here.

Report of the International Group of eminent individuals for leading an
investigation into the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda and its consequences
on the region of the Great Lakes. Addis-Abeba, July 2000, 600 pages.

In June1994, in Tunis, the members of the OAU demanded the creation of an impartial commission of inquiry.
The General Prosecutor at the ICTR was Mr. Richard Goldstone (Nov. 1994 to
Sept. 1996), Mme Louise Arbour (Sept. 1996 to Sept. 1999), Mme Carla Del
Ponte (Sept. 1999 to Aug. 2002) and Mr. Hassan Bubacar Jallow from Aug.
2002 to the present.