Kigali calls for change in UN tribunal's mandate

The government of Rwanda has urged the UN Security Council to appoint a separate prosecutor for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and to change the court's statutes to make it more efficient and accountable, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on Thursday. In a statement, the government urged the council to organise "as soon as possible" a debate on the comprehensive review of the performance, mandate and future of the tribunal, based in Arusha, Tanzania. It said the tribunal should be transformed into a "Sierra Leone type" of international court or to allow the transfer of some of its cases to special chambers of Rwanda’s domestic courts. The UN has established a court in Sierra Leone with national and international judges presiding over cases of crimes against humanity committed during years of civil war in that country. "Considering that the completion strategy of the ICTR already envisages the transfer of the bulk of the cases of the persons indicted by the ICTR to Rwanda’s domestic courts, the government of Rwanda calls upon the members of the Security Council to consider for example whether the time is not appropriate to alter the statute of the tribunal," the ministry said. The government said the transfer of the cases would speed up trials for alleged perpetrators and masterminds of the 1994 genocide, and bring international justice closer to the genocide victims. The government has accused the tribunal of incompetence by its personnel, corruption, mistreatment and lack of protection for prosecution witnesses and for failing to have an impact on Rwandan society. At the same time, the government welcomed a decision by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to recommend to the council that a separate prosecutor be appointed for the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Swiss-Italian Carla Del Ponte holds the post, but her contract at the ICTR is due to expire in September. The government has in the past accused Del Ponte of her mismanagement" of the tribunal's Office of the Prosecutor. "The prosecutor spends no more than 30 days or so in Kigali and Arusha in any one year and devotes most of her time and attention instead to the ICTY," the ministry said. The government has been unhappy with Del Ponte for more than a year, since she announced that the tribunal would seek to prosecute members of the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army for war crimes committed during and after the genocide. The UN Security Council established the ICTR in 1995 to try the alleged perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda. At least 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, died during the April-June 1994 genocide.