02-06-2010
The UIA requests the immediate release of Professor Erlinder and that all charges against him be dropped
The UIA has learned of the arrest of Peter Erlinder on 28 May 2010. Peter Erlinder is a US law professor and attorney, who is also the president of an association of defence lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He was detained while in Rwanda to defend Ms Victoire Ingabire, a candidate in the presidential elections of 9 August 2010. Ms Ingabire is under arrest and has been charged with “denying genocide, ethnic divisionism and terrorism”.
Professor Erlinder is also accused of denying genocide. The UIA denounces this arrest.
Professor Erlinder was in Rwanda to advise Ms Victoire Ingabire and to assist her with her defence. In this context, he must benefit from the protection that results from the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana, Cuba, 27 August to 7 September 1990.
Moreover, the UIA wishes to emphasise that the Rwandan law of 23 July 2008 against genocidal ideology is widely open to criticism in that it allows charges to be brought against acts that are part of freedom of expression, as protected by several international conventions to which Rwanda is a party, such as, in particular, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The UIA therefore requests the immediate release of Professor Peter Erlinder and that all charges against him be dropped.
About the Union Internationale des Avocats
The Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA – International Association of Lawyers) was founded in 1927 and is the oldest professional association, with several thousand individual members, as well as more than 200 bar associations, federations and organisations (representing nearly two million lawyers) from over 110 countries.
The main objectives of the UIA are to promote the basic principles of the legal profession; to contribute to the establishment of an international legal order based on the principles of human rights and justice among nations, through the law and for the cause of peace; to defend the moral and material interests of members of the legal profession.
For more information: http://dlh.uianet.org
uiacentre@uianet.org
Press contact:
Marie-Pierre LIENARD, Communication Officer mplienard@uianet.org
Julie GOFFIN, Human Rights and Defence of the Defence Co-ordinator / Permanent Representative at the International Organisations jgoffin@uianet.org
Union Internationale des Avocats
25 rue du Jour – 75001 Paris – France
Tel : +33 1 44 88 55 66 – Fax : +33 1 44 88 55 77
E-mail : uiacentre@uianet.org
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The Truth can be buried Statement from President and Dean Eric S. Janus on Prof. Peter Erlinder’s arrest in Rwandaand stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a “time”, yet It cannot be de
stroyed. ==> Wolverine
