ICTR investigator detained

Following a request by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), one of its own defence investigators was arrested Saturday at the premises of the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania on suspicion of involvement in the 1994 genocide. According to the Hirondelle news agency, Simeon Nshamihigo had been working with the ICTR for over two years under the alias Sammy Bahati, with a forged passport from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Sources told Hirondelle that Nshamihigo had first been identified by a witness to another case as having been implicated in the 1994 genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and that the ICTR already had already started a file on him. The arrest comes after the Rwandan government complained in March that some investigators working for defence teams at the ICTR were themselves genocide fugitives. Nshamihigo’s name appears on Rwanda’s primary list of top genocide suspects alleged to have masterminded the genocide.

The ICTR maintains that it does screen defence investigators, who are hired under contract by defence lawyers with the approval of the Tribunal. It says security screening considers but does not depend on the Rwandan government’s list of suspects.

The suspect was an investigator for the defence team of Samuel Imanishimwe, the former commander of Cyangugu military barracks in southwestern Rwanda whose genocide trial is currently before the Tribunal. Together with co-defendants Andrea Ntagerura, a former transport minister, and Emmanuel Bagambiki, a former mayor of the Cyangugu prefecture, Imanishimwe is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Nshamihigo was himself a former prosecutor of the Cyangugu court, according to ICTR chief of Press and Information Tom Kennedy.