A UN report has revealed mismanagement and breaking of rules by officials at the Rwanda genocide tribunal , writes Chris McGreal
A UNITED NATIONS report says the international Rwanda genocide trials have been crippled by chaotic management, underqualified legal staff and indifference at UN headquarters.
The UN inspector general, Karl Paschke, said that unless there is an overhaul of what he described as the most important trials since Nuremburg, the Rwandan people “will be right to suspect that justice delayed is justice denied”.
It was nearly three years after the launch of the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis before the first alleged killer went on trial in January.
And while the tribunal has 13 of the 21 people it has so far indicted in custody, only one of them is a highly placed official in the Hutu extremist regime which organised the slaughter. All the cabinet ministers of the deposed government remain free and, so far, unindicted.
In his report on the tribunal, Paschke concluded that “not a single administrative area (of the court) functioned effectively” amid “mismanagement in almost all areas of the tribunal and frequent violations of UN rules and regulations”.
The report singled out the tribunal’s Kenyan administrator for criticism. It also accused its deputy prosecutor, a judge from Madagascar, of incompetence.
Among other things the report noted was that the administrator, Andronico Adede, spent half his time travelling without having his trips approved by anyone.
While he was away administrative work often ground to a halt. Tribunal investigators’ phones in Rwanda were cut four times last year because the administration failed to pay the bills on time.
The deputy prosecutor, Honore Rakotomanana, failed to coordinate investigations, leaving lawyers and detectives to pursue their inquiries haphazardly.
Both men face the possibility of dismissal when their contracts expire next month.
The UN inquiry was launched two months ago amid allegations that the tribunal’s African administrators hired unqualified friends and lovers, discriminated against non-Africans and paralysed the tribunal with incompetence and bureaucracy. But while Paschke found there had been gross mismanagement he did not find evidence of corruption.
The chief prosecutor, Canadian judge Louise Arbour, who has overall responsibility for the tribunal, welcomed the report as a turning point. She said she will fly to Rwanda and the court in Tanzania next week to meet the officials most criticised by the report but declined to discuss the possibility of their dismissal.
“The report will have a positive effect in dispelling the most outrageous allegations such as allegations of gross sexual misconduct, or rampant nepotism or corruption. Having said that, it’s fair to say the report exposed extremely serious mismanagement, with departments being particularly deficient by leaving the Rwanda tribunal to struggle along on its own.”
But others, including the Rwandan government, say that ultimate responsibility for the tribunal’s shortcomings can be traced back to the UN Security Council decision to divide responsibility between the prosecutor at Tiu Hague, the investigators in Rwanda and the court in Tanzania -beside leaving many crucial appointments to the UN in New York.
Others point the finger at Judge Arbour’s predecessor, the South African judge Richard Goldstone. Critics, such as the Rwandan deputy justice minister Gerald Gahima, say Judge Goldstone was never really interested in the Rwanda court and that he was using it as a stepping stone to ensuring his name figured prominently in the creation of a permanent international war crimes tribunal.
“Rwanda is peripheral to the prosecution’s work. Goldstone only used to come here for a few days to meet the president and vice president. The tribunal cannot be effective until Rwanda has its own prosecutor,” Gahima said.
Even before the UN released its report the tribunal administrator and deputy prosecutor were under fire from their own staff and through leaks to the press.
The racially charged accusations of nepotism and discrimination against non- Africans cut particularly deep. Judge Rakotomanana fired back that fewer than half of his 92 staff members are Africans.
“There are always some people who are unhappy. I fear those who might try to create divisions between Africa and the rest of the world are wrong, and what they are doing is creating destabilisation which undermines the work of the tribunal.
“The first victim will be Rwanda itself, and then the international community. If justice does not go forward, then the massacres will not have been accounted for,” he said.
Whatever the causes, divisions inside the tribunal run deep and not solely on racial lines. Women in senior positions complain of rampant sexism. Differences have also arisen between the lawyers, who made up the bulk of the initial investigators, and the policeman who are now in the majority.