Are Rwanda’s courts ready to prosecute the country’s worst crimes? As opposition leader Victoire Ingabire announces she will boycott her terror trial after losing all hope of having a fair trial, some critics are saying it appears not.
By Josephine Uwineza, Hilversum
“Ingabire’s decision to withdraw from the trial certainly doesn’t increase her chances of being acquitted,” says her British lawyer, Iain Edwards. “But she’s a grown woman, she’s an intelligent woman, she’s an independent woman and she has taken the decision that she has.”
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| Ms Ingabire Victoire The Would be President of Rwanda And now in Prison. Western Governments should improve their sincerity on democratic issues in Africa. The Criminal Kagame is no way intimidated He’s even encouraged to assassinate That woman who still believes in DEMOCRATIC VALUES  Enough is Enough |
ICTR judges had previously kept Uwikindi in Arusha, saying they couldn’t send him back until “a suitable monitoring mechanism is established to oversee his trial.” In ruling that Uwikindi could be returned, court President Judge Khalida Rachid Khan instructed the registry to “urgently undertake discussions and negotiations” to put such a monitoring system in place. While ultimately the ACHPR (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights) will monitor the domestic trials, for now, an interim monitor is doing the job.
Fair trial?
Courts worldwide—including those in Canada, Norway, Sweden and even the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights)—are also ruling that it is safe to send Rwandans back home for fair trials.
But Victoire Ingabire insists it is not.
During her trial in Kigali last month, she challenged judges to nullify the laws related to “divisionism” and “genocide ideology.” She argued they are too broad and being exploited by current President Paul Kagame’s government to limit the freedom of thought.
The ideology law is seen by many legal specialists and human rights organizations as “impossibly vague, broad and abstract,” according to a 2010 Amnesty International report.
But just last week, Rwandan Supreme Court judges rejected her plea on a technicality, saying “she had failed to secure a copy of the 2008 law on genocide, which was also supposed to be attached to her plea.”
Ingabire’s key witness, Michel Habimana, a Lt Colonel of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), told the court he has been intimidated by prosecutors’ threats and interrogated by unknown officials, casting further doubts, say legal experts, on the independence of the judiciary.
African SurViVors International (ASI) is an international nonpartisan charity organization devoted to defending human rights. It’s an organization working to promote democracy and national reconciliation, inside countries of the African Great lakes Region.
As International centers its work on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny. These ideals include the belief that all human beings have the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries;
As International’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. As Internatioal does not support nor condone violence.
The Truth can be buried and 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 destroyed. ==> Wolverine
