Jean Damascène Bizimana, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), has welcomed a decision by a UN court to reject the request for review of mass murderer Augustin Ngirabatware’s conviction rendered in 2012.
The Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (RMICT) on Tuesday decided to reject the request in which Ngirabatware sought to have his 30-year jail sentence overturned.
"In particular, the CNLG has shown the admissibility of the application for review would call into question the ICTR’s convictions of genocidaires in several cases. It would also be a work of minimizing the gravity of the genocide committed against the Tutsi, and a consecration of the culture of impunity,” Bizimana said in a statement.
The goal behind the request to review the convict’s judgment was not only to acquit him, CNLG states, but above all to create case law for review of other final judgments pronounced by the ICTR, and thereby overturn their legality and legitimacy.
Ngirabatware was found guilty on December 20, 2012 by the ICTR of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and rape.
At the time, the tribunal found that he incited, aided and abetted militiamen from his Nyamyumba District in the then Gisenyi prefecture to kill their Tutsi neighbours and rape Tutsi women during the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
The appeals chamber also found him guilty of genocide, incitement to genocide, but reduced the sentence to 30 years after acquitting him on the charge of rape.
On July 8, 2016, the convict applied for a review of his conviction, claiming to have discovered new evidence in his case.
On July 25 that year, an appeals chamber was appointed to hear his case. It was chaired by Judge Theodor Meron, the then president of the Mechanism.
This appeals chamber granted the convict’s request and scheduled the hearings to commence on September 16, 2019.
Genocide survivors and Rwandan government have, among others, in the past accused Meron of releasing two convicted Genocide masterminds, Ferdinand Nahimana and Father Emmanuel Rukundo, who were serving their sentences in Mali, in 2016.
Meron was last year replaced with Justice Carmel Agius by the tribunal’s appointing authority, the United Nations Security Council.
According to CNLG, as soon as the review date for the trial was communicated, Ngirabatware set up a team to bribe witnesses in order to discredit all charges for which he was found guilty.
"This team of plotters is composed of the following persons: Maximilian Turinabo, Anselme Nzabonimpa, Jean Ndagijimana, Marie Rose Fatuma and Dick Prudence Munyeshuli.”
The Commission hopes that the new decision will serve as a precedent for further applications for review by genocidaires convicted by the ICTR.
"CNLG calls on the Mechanism to redouble its efforts to apprehend and try the main fugitives suspected of genocide.”
The key Genocide fugitives include Augustin Bizimana, Félicien Kabuga, Protais Mpiranya, Fulgence Kayishema, Phénéas Munyarugarama, Aloys Ndimbati, Charles Sikubwabo, and Charles Ryandikayo.
The Chief Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), Serge Brammertz, recently told the UN Security Council that his office had credible intelligence on the whereabouts of several of the fugitives.
editor@newtimesrwanda.com