OWN CORRESPONDENT, Arusha, Tanzania | Thursday
THE United Nations’ chief war crimes prosecutor says two African countries – suspected to be Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo – are sheltering some of the most wanted suspects of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, said the countries were not cooperating with the United Nations.
Although Del Ponte would not name the countries or suspects, official sources at the tribunal said Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were the chief culprits.
”I depend on the goodwill of the governments in the search, arrest and transfer of these suspects,” Del Ponte said. ”My judicial police are the states [themselves].”
She said some suspects travelled freely to sympathetic countries and even had passports issued under new identities and nationalities.
”What bothers me is that they hold authentic passports, they are able to buy authentic passports,” she said. ”Each time they travel, they travel with a different authentic passport.”
Over 800000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in a three-month genocide in 1994 by Hutu extremists. The UN formed the court a year later to prosecute the chief architects of the genocide.
Del Ponte said the tribunal may soon issue indictments against Rwandan Tutsis who took revenge in the aftermath of the genocide or while attempting to stop it.
The move follows talks between Del Ponte and Major General Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, on his government’s cooperation with investigations into alleged massacres by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the movement which ended the genocide.
The tribunal in the past has been criticised as being a ”victors’ court” due to the fact that only members of the previous Hutu-dominated regime have been indicted, despite evidence that suggests war crimes were also perpetrated by the mainly Tutsi RPF. – Reuters