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The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, on Monday rejected a motion calling for South African judge Nevanethem Pillay and Senegalese judge Laity Kama to be disqualified from the case against former foreign ministry adviser Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, the independent Hirondelle news agency reported on Tuesday. Defence counsel Justry Patrice Lumumba Nyaberi said the two judges had, in the trial of former Rwandan mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu, “expressed themselves on the role of RTLM [Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines] and the CDR [extremist Hutu party] in the 1994 massacres” and therefore “could not be neutral with regard to Barayagwiza”, who is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. The court also rejected a second defence motion seeking to postpone all future proceedings pending a decision on an appeal seeking Barayagwiza’s release on the grounds that he was illegally arrested and detained in Cameroon in 1997.
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