{Civil parties and defense teams have denounced the deliberate “slowness” of the two cases entrusted to the French justice by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
}
On Monday, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), reported on its website , Mr Emmanuel Daoud representing the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in both cases emphasizes “the unreasonable length of the proceedings” and ” lack of political will by the French authorities ” to see the two files accomplished.
The MICT was created by a resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations in December 2010 to ensure the remaining functions of the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which must close their doors late 2014.
The two courts of the United Nations have already transferred to MTPI some of their functions, including monitoring the progress of referred cases to national jurisdictions.
It was in November 2007 that the ICTR told the French justice to proceedings with the cases of Wenceslas Munyeshyaka , former vicar of the parish of Sainte Famille in Kigali , and the former leader of Gikongoro (southern ) Bucyibaruta which were already the subject of French surveys for several years.
Living in France, the two men are currently under judicial control.
For Michel Tubiana , lawyer for the League of Human Rights , the slowness of these procedures “obviously greatly handicapped justice in her quest for relevant evidence .”
The lawyer says “the disappearance of a number of witnesses,” and one of the lawyers of the clergyman, Mr. Jean -Yves Dupeux, complains, too, “the unreasonable length of the proceedings.”
France has already been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2004 for unreasonable delay in this case.
According to a previous report of MICT, the French justice hopes to complete the legal information at the end of 2014 for Munyeshyaka case and in early 2015 in Bucyibaruta case.
Both men were indicted by the ICTR for genocide and crimes against humanity. Father Munyeshyaka has already been tried in absentia in Rwanda and sentenced to life imprisonment.
France and Rwanda are the only two countries that the ICTR has entrusted some cases, under its strategy to end of term.
Leave a Reply