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Del Ponte denied visa

    NAIROBI

    Rwanda has refused to provide an entry visa for the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in protest over the decision to release genocide suspect Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, news agencies said. Attorney-General Gerald Gahima said on Sunday that the Rwandan embassy in Belgium had denied a visa for the prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, who had been scheduled to arrive in Kigali on Tuesday. “We will find an appropriate way to continue communicating with the tribunal. But for the time being, our embassy has been instructed to deny her visa,” the Associated Press quoted Gahima as saying. The ICTR’s appeals chamber in the Hague on 3 November ordered the Tribunal to release Barayagwiza, for procedural reasons, and to return him to Cameroon, where he was originally arrested in 1997. That controversial decision led Rwanda to suspend its cooperation with the ICTR.

    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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