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Government slams ICTR complaint to UN Security Council

    NAIROBI

    The Rwandan government has issued a formal reply that sharply criticises a recent letter from the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) for Rwanda to the United Nations Security Council, accusing Kigali of a lack of cooperation with the court.

    In a letter to the President of the Council released on 2 August at UN headquarters in New York, ICTR President Judge Navanethem Pillay said that ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had complained of a lack of cooperation from Rwandan authorities, describing how the lack of availability of witnesses from Rwanda was likely to hamper the court's judicial work and hinder the prosecutor's investigations.

    In particular, the letter accused the Rwandan authorities of failure to issue travel documents for witnesses in a timely manner to enable them to appear in ongoing trials. Tribunal judges had expressed concern, because three cases had already been postponed several times due to the unavailability of witnesses from Rwanda, Pillay said.

    [For information on the Tribunal click HERE]

    In a nine-page response, Rwanda accused the Tribunal of "a crisis of management, incompetence and corruption of its own making", saying it wished "to challenge the attempt by the Prosecutor to point to Rwanda as the cause of the crisis and not to the Tribunal itself".

    "In view of false accusations and deliberate misrepresentations", Rwanda said it was "compelled to reply and put forward recommendations to the Security Council".

    [For For Rwanda's complete reply click Here]

    Last week, the International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a report on the ICTR stating there was "no chance" that the court would complete its mission before 2008, at its current rate of work. This, it said, was because of the Tribunal's "overly ambitious" prosecution schedule and "the lack of effective efforts" to expedite processes and hearings.

    [To view the complete ICG report, available only in French, click Here
    to view the report's executive summary and recommendations in English, click HERE]

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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