[Since 1994, the world witnesses the horrifying Tutsi minority (14%) the total impunity of RPF criminals the brutal suppression of the rights of the majority of the Rwandan people (85% are Hutus), ASIF]
C. Peter Erlinder Professor of Law
President of the Arusha Defense Lawyers Assoc., ADAD
KIGALI, Rwanda — An American lawyer helping defend a Rwandan presidential hopeful against charges that include promoting a genocidal ideology was arrested Friday and charged with genocide denial, police said.
The U.S. National Lawyers Guild demanded Peter Erlinder’s immediate release and said the government was trying to hamstring the legal defense of Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader running against President Paul Kagame in Aug. 9 elections
“There can be no justice for anyone if the state can silence lawyers for defendants whom it dislikes and a government that seeks to prevent lawyers from being vigorous advocates for their clients cannot be trusted,” said David Gespass, the president of The U.S. National Lawyers Guild. Lawyer ventures into Kigali to defend Ingabire from olny.nl on Vimeo .
Ms. Ingabire Victoire, a female Hutu, returned to Rwanda in January to contest elections after 16 years of living abroad. She says she returned to Rwanda because the country needs an open discussion to promote reconciliation.
She immediately visited a memorial to Tutsis killed in the 1994 genocide and asked why Hutus who also died weren’t remembered. She was arrested and freed on bail but her passport was seized and she cannot leave Kigali. If convicted, Ingabire, 41, could be sentenced to more than two decades in prison.
Her case has become a test of where Rwanda stands in its effort to move past the genocide – and how much freedom the government will allow
“Kagame, set me free”
Ingabire Says. Erlinder is the president of an association of defense lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that is trying the masterminds of the 1994 genocide. He is also a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.
KPFA Radio News reported on the arrest of Rwandan Presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza’s American lawyer on Sunday evening, 05.30.2010. To play, click KPFA News: Rwanda arrests Peter Erlinder.
There is perhaps no better contemporary example of a Fascist regime that justifies its existence on false History than Paul Kagame’s brutally privatized Rwanda. Our friend Peter Erlinder, President of the Arusha Defense Lawyers Assoc., ADAD. , who has worked very hard t0 Defend the true history of that country by establishing the real nature of and responsibility for the mass killings in Rwanda, now finds himself a Prisoner in Kigali’s central jail. But his Defense of History against the Fascist Kagame regime makes it most appropraite that Me Erlinder be the second individual case [after General Krstic] for whose Defense this Committee is mobilizing.
Here is the ADAD Press Release on Me Erlinder’s arrest on this blog: Attorney Peter Erlinder Must Be Immediately Released According to available information, Professor Peter Erlinder, a Defence attorney at the ICTR, and Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law in the United States, was arrested on 28 May in Kigali on the charge of “denying genocide.” Professor Erlinder is in Kigali this week, acting on behalf of his client, Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who is trying to oppose President Kagame in the upcoming August elections, and who also has been charged with “denying genocide.” Professor Erlinder is Lead Counsel for Major Aloys Ntabakuze in the “Military I” case at the ICTR. He is also one of the organizers of the successful ICTR Defence Conference, held in Brussels, Belgium last week-end. He is President of the ADAD, the ICTR Defense Counsel organization.
We urge all individuals and organizations to urgently contact the Rwandan government, the U.S. Government and others to a) demand the immediate release of Professor Peter Erlinder; b) demand Professor Erlinder’s immediate access to counsel; and c) urge the Rwandan government to drop the fabricated and baseless charges against Professor Erlinder. © ADAD
☼ ICD NATO/UN Political Prisoners & POWs
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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
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
