New ICTR rules intended to curb abuses

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has introduced a series of measures designed to prevent abuse of its legal aid system and to protect the integrity of its judicial process. The move follows the release in February of a report by a UN oversight committee, which detailed alleged irregularities at the ICTR, including fee-splitting arrangements between some supposedly poverty-stricken clients and lawyers retained by the Tribunal on their behalf.

ICTR Registrar Adama Dieng said the taking of gifts by defence lawyers to their clients at the UN Detention Facility (UNDF) in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha had been restricted, and strict personal searches introduced for people visiting detainees, the Internews agency reported. Meetings between members of defence teams and detainees other than their own clients had also been stopped, Internews quoted Dieng as saying. The ICTR had also introduced personal history forms to be filled by investigators hired by defence teams in order to ensure that lawyers did not hire individuals related to defendants or who had engaged in activities incompatible with the purposes of the Tribunal, Dieng said. Rwanda has previously alleged that certain defence team investigators, paid for by the ICTR, were themselves complicit in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.