Bagosora, other defendants boycott trial

A Rwandan former military officer and alleged mastermind behind the 1994 genocide, Col Theoneste Bagosora, and three other senior commanders in the former Rwandan army on Tuesday boycotted the opening of their trial at the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

They were not in court, because, they argued, their rights were "being violated", a news release from the Tribunal said. However, they asked their lawyers to represent them, it noted, adding that the defence team had unsuccessfully argued for an adjournment of the trial, saying they had not received the trial briefs in time and in both of the Tribunal's official languages.

According to the release, the presiding judge, Lloyd George Williams, said the court would not force the accused to attend their trial. However, he ordered the Registry to write them a letter stating that it was in their interest and in the interest of justice to do so.

Bagosora, former directeur de cabinet in the defence ministry, is facing the so-called "military trial", along with Lt-Col Anatole Nsengiyumva, former commander of military operations in Rwanda's northwestern Gisenyi sector, Maj Aloys Ntabakuze, former commander of the para-commando battalion, and Brig-Gen Gratien Kabiligi, former chief of military operations.

They are charged in the joint trial with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, crimes against humanity for murder, extermination, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts, the release said.

In her opening statement, the prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, told the court that the accused were responsible for crimes of a gravity and character which had shocked the conscience of the world. She said that following the establishment by several verdicts of the ICTR that genocide was committed in Rwanda in 1994, the prosecution would now unravel those who were behind it.

"Bagosora is alleged to have been one of the leading masterminds of the genocide, and therefore this particular trial should go to the heart of the issue of how the genocide was actually planned and executed at the highest level of the military and political establishment," the ICTR spokesman, Kingsley Moghalu, told IRIN on Tuesday.