The temporary suspension of the trial of the alleged financier of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Felicien Kabuga, following a court-appointed team submitted a report claiming that he is not fit for trial has been termed by local analysts as ‘a failure to challenge the impunity of serious crimes’ ALSO READ: Kabuga’s trial temporarily suspended over his health In an interview with The New Times, Alphonse Muleefu, the senior lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Rwanda, said that it is a challenge to the court. “If his health is indeed that bad that he cannot defend himself intelligibly if he cannot remember facts, the court may have to suspend the case indefinitely,” said Muleefu, who is also the acting Principal of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the same university. ALSO READ: Discontinuing Kabuga trial would be miscarriage of justice Regarding the impact of such a decision on justice delivery as well as the message it sends to the genocide suspects especially those who are still at large, Muleefu pointed out that it is a failure to challenge the impunity of serious crimes. “Those fugitives committed the alleged crimes when they were fit to stand trial, but now almost 30 years later, some have become too old or dead. This is a limitation to criminal justice,” he explained, adding that “you cannot prosecute people who cannot reasonably understand their interests. But, unfortunately, I don't know whether victims of their crimes can understand those intricacies of rule of law.” ALSO READ: Genocide fugitives should be brought to book –Busingye Reacting to the same decision, the president of IBUKA, an umbrella body of Genocide survivors associations, Philbert Gakwenzire, said that they are concerned about the court decision because of the role justice plays in country development as well as survivors’ healing. “Kabuga spent 28 years at large and by the time he was apprehended instead of getting a quick trial, there were delays in process of producing him before court, and this is worrying because he might die without being convicted,” he explained Furthermore, he noted that as IBUKA they understand that he might be seriously ill but again this was also a defense tactic to delay the trial and possibly Kabuga would die before being convicted which will be a big loss in delivering justice to the survivors. As a way forward, Gakwenzire disclosed that they are planning to talk to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT)’s prosecutor general and its spokesperson to see how they can review such a decision among other measures. On his part, Minister of National Unity and Civic Engagement, Jean-Damascène Bizimana, mentioned that they believe that the judges will decide to proceed with the case in the interest of justice. “This is a strategy used by Kabuga's defence lawyers even at the beginning of the trial to find a way for him to die without being tried and they are still trying. The fact that they requested an independent medical report is a continuation of that plan,” he explained. Kabuga is before judges at the IRMCT after he was apprehended in France in 2020, after being on the run for over two decades and a half. For close to three decades, hundreds of indicted Genocide fugitives have been using all sorts of tricks to avoid capture just because of being of advanced age.
