New trials open at UN tribunal despite detainees' boycott

Two new trials opened on Monday before the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), despite a boycott of court proceedings by detainees of the UN body, an official said.

"The judges have authorised the trials to go on despite the absence of the detainees," Roland Amoussouga, the tribunal's spokesman, told IRIN from Arusha, Tanzania.

He said only one of the four accused in the "Military II" trial - of four former Rwandan army officers - was in court when the case opened.

The trial against a Roman Catholic priest accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda also opened despite the absence of Father Athanase Seromba, who joined the other detainees in the boycott.

Amoussouga said the boycott was a culmination of complaints by the detainees against a UN Security Council resolution of August 2003 on the tribunal's completion strategy that included a recommendation to transfer some of its cases to national courts in Rwanda, and to have those convicted by the tribunal to serve their sentences there.

He said the boycott also coincided with the arrival of a Rwandan government delegation at the ICTR headquarters in Arusha. The delegates are on a weeklong visit to hold consultations with the tribunal's officials on the transfer of prisoners and cases of suspects to Rwandan prisons and national courts.

Only the former commander of Rwanda's elite reconnaissance battalion during the genocide, Maj François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, 45, was in the dock when the Military II trial opened, Amossouga told IRIN.

Nzuwonemeye is being tried jointly with three other former military officers: Army chief-of-staff Gen Augustin Bizimungu, 52; gendamerie chief-of-staff Gen Augustin Ndindiliyimana, 61; and deputy commander of the elite reconnaissance battalion, Capt Innocent Sagahutu. All four have denied charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The trial of another four former Rwandan military officers, known as the "Military I", has been before the UN court since 2002.

The trial of Seromba, who was in charge of Nyange parish in the commune of Kivumu, in Rwanda's western province of Kibuye, is the first of a Catholic priest before the tribunal. He has denied charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.

Amossouga told IRIN that ICTR prosecutor Hassan Jallow told the judges presiding over the Military II trial that the tribunal would be guided by its rules regarding the transfer of cases to national courts.

At the same time, Amossouga said the prosecutor had completed investigations into allegations of crimes committed in 1994 by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, now Rwanda's national army.

"He [the prosecutor] is evaluating the evidence gathered" in order to proceed to the next stage of whether or not to prosecute those implicated, Amossouga said.