Olivier Nyirubugara 17 November 2009
The UN International criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has a few years to go and discussions about its legacy for the International Criminal Law has started. While some perceive that Tribunal as a major advancement, others, including defense laywers, who have been defending genocide suspects for last fourteen years, think that this ICTR and other ad hoc courts, have created a regrettable precedent.
Part One: The illegality of the ICTR
The legality of the ICTR questioned
‘The ICTR has been a big mistake’, said Kenyan defense attorney Kennedy Ogetto. He was speaking in The Hague, The Netherlands on 14 November 2009 in a three-day self-sponsored conference. Over 100 people, mostly Rwandans, but also foreigners coming from all over the world listened to frustration-marked presentations by the lawyers and other scholars and experts.
Part Two: The illegality of the ICTR
The ICTR and the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine
The ICTR and the Judicial genocide
Zigiranyirazo and Péan acquitted
The ICTR is illegal
The legality of the ICTR is still being discussed, even as the Court’s closure is drawing near. In this regard, the laywers and scholars who spoke during the conference converge to qualify the setting up the ICTR by the Security Council as an abuse of power.
The ICTR Archives: The battle to control the future
‘No ad hoc criminal court should be created by the UN Security Council’, said, Austrian Philosophy professor Hans Koechler , adding that justice should not be administered by the five super-powers with the veto right. Veteran French Laywer, Roland Weyl agrees:
‘All the tribunals set up by the Security Council are marked by a fundamental international illegality’, he said. He explained that the sole task of the Security Council is to keep and restore peace. ‘The setting up of criminal tribunals is … a prerogative of the General Assembly in its full sovereignty’, he concluded View the entire report
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
