Rwanda: ICTR Appeals chamber seeks true facts on charges against Erlinder
By RNA News with Hirondelle
June 11, 2010
Arusha : The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has instructed the Registrar to obtain all information regarding exact nature and basis of charges against American lawyer Peter Erlinder, who was recently arraigned in Rwanda for “genocide denial”.
“The Appeals Chamber instructs the Registrar, on an urgent basis, to request the assistance of Rwandan authorities for the purposes of obtaining all information relating to the exact nature and basis of the charges brought against Peter Erlinder,” it said in its order dated June 9, 2010.
The decision follows a motion by genocide-convict and former Rwandan army officer, Major Aloys Ntabakuze, seeking orders requiring the Tribunal’s Registrar to take immediate action to secure the release of Prof. Erlinder, his lead counsel in the pending appeal against the life imprisonment sentence he is facing.
Ntabakuze also sought for orders to stop all proceedings against his counsel, who was arrested on May 28 and subsequently charged with offences related to "negation of the 1994 genocide".
Charges against Erlinder, he claimed, were directly connected to statements he made outside Rwanda, including before the Tribunal in course of his defence, thus constituting intimidation and serious interference with legal process and directly impact his rights to a fair and expeditious trial.
He said the necessary treatment to protect performance of defence members’ functions was for Tribunal to enjoin the Rwandan government to refrain from intimidating, harassing and interfering with their functions and drop the charges against Erlinder and release him immediately.
Erlinder, a Law Professor, is President of the ICTR defence lawyers association in Arusha. He had been in Kigali as part of defence team of an opponent to President Paul Kagame's regime, Victoire Ingabire, who is charged with negation of genocide, collaboration to a terrorist organization and spreading ethnic division.
posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 10:50 AM
1 Comments:
Here is what is written in paragraph #7 of the copy of Erlinder’s trial
(http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/93/44/38/PeterErlinderTrial6-7-10.pdf)
(Kinyarwanda):
“Even though the genocide was planned by the Interahamwe during the MRND regime by putting up a list of Tutsis and Hutus to be killed, during the Military I Trial at the ICTR, Carl Peter Erlinder denied and downplayed genocide. He managed to prove that the genocide has not been planned nor executed by the military officials he was representing and showed that his clients were mostly preoccupied by the country’s sovereignty. The prosecutor stressed that Carl Peter Erlinder had no reason to deny or downplay genocide adding that he continued to do so through out many other trials;”
We all know that the ICTR and the RPF regime have so far failed to prove that the ther was a conspiracy to kill Tutsis or a prior planning of the genocide by the ex-FAR before April 6, 1994.
(http://backtomyroots.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/rwanda-conspiracy-to-commit-genocide-important-missing-puzzle-piece/)
The Rwandan government insists that Erlinder’s arrest and imprisonment is not linked to his previous work at the ICTR. It will be very hard to prove it to the world when the English version of Erlinder’s trial is published.
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