Right to host ICTR archives

The acting Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Pascal Besnier, has said that at a personal level, the people of Rwanda deserve the opportunity to host the archives of the trial proceedings when the international court winds up in 2014.Besnier, who assumed office this month, was speaking yesterday during a news conference that he jointly addressed with Prosecutor General, Martin Ngoga, in Kigali.“But the decision on the destiny of the archives shall be taken by the UN Security Council,” he added.He added that ICTR has even done considerable work in the area of outreach through establishment of Umusanzu, a documentation centre on international criminal justice, and the fact that most of the key rulings can be accessed online. Ngoga said he hoped a common ground on the issue of the archives would be reached.“We may not get 100 per cent of our bargain, but something shall be gotten. It may be a win-win situation,” he said. On the issue of fugitives still at large, the registrar said: “Currently, the desire is to have them arrested and brought to justice. Whether that is in Rwanda or not, but we want to see them tried”. The archives factor has been a thorny issue in relations between Rwanda and the international court. Rwanda argues that the archives are part of the national heritage and should be kept in the country.Besnier replaced Adama Dieng who assumed a new office this month. ICTR was established in 1994 by the UN Security Council to try people who bear the greatest responsibility for the Genocide against theTutsi in Rwanda that claimed over a million lives. The tribunal is bound to close shop in 2014 after indicting 92 people, arrested 83 accused persons and completed 77 trials while five others are still on trial. Three other high level suspects; Felicien Kabuga, Protais Mpiranya and Augustin Bizimana are still at large and should they be arrested, they may be tried by the court’s residual mechanism, transferred to face trials in Rwanda or tried at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The court has been operating on an annual budget of US$270 million (Rwf 167.4bn). Over US$30 million (Rwf, 18bn) have been pumped into the Tanzanian economy by ICTR through house rents and local purchases and procurement.Like Nuremberg and Tokyo trials (First Generation Tribunals) were criticized for ex post facto law and victor’s justice, ICTR has received its fair share of criticism for convicting only 83 suspects over a period spanning almost two decades despite the huge budget. Law scholars credit the Nuremberg trials (post 2nd World War) for establishing the principle of individual responsibility for serious violations of international law, while the ICTR expressly defined in the Akayezu trial that sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide.With the closure of ICTR and its sister tribunal, ICTY (Yugoslavia) no other tribunal shall be established as such cases shall be referred to the ICC in The Hague.

National

Right to host ICTR archives