More reaction to ‘National Post’ article

Rwanda’s representative to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has asked the Arusha-based tribunal to say whether one of its investigators had leaked a document alleging that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) assassinated Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994, the Internews service reported. The representative, Martin Ngoga, was reacting to a recent article in Canada’s ‘National Post’ newspaper, which implicated the RPF in the downing of an aircraft transporting Habyarimana and the-then president of Burundi. The Rwandan government has rejected the allegations. The ‘National Post’ cited a leaked confidential UN report as the source for the article and said the information had been provided in 1997 to former ICTR prosecutor Louise Arbour. “There are a number of contradictions in the article,” Internews quoted Ngoga as saying last Thursday. “We are simply asking the Tribunal to tell us the relationship it has with the paper.”

An ICTR spokesman told IRIN on Tuesday that the Tribunal had no comment on the ‘National Post’ article. “Up to now, there is no official response”, he said.