Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Rwanda: What is on Peter Erlinder’s charge sheet?

By Fred Mwasa
Rwanda News Agency
June 12, 2010

Appearing gaunt and tired on Monday, Erlinder pleaded unsuccessfully for his innocence (Photo: Adam Hooper).

Kigali: As controversial American attorney Peter Erlinder spends another week in jail since May 27, his nine-man international legal team is starting to suggest that he may not be out up until after the August 09 presidential polls. But what are the charges against him? Based on court documents, media reports and conversations with individuals close to the case, RNA details them.

According to the decision issued Monday by the Gasabo Intermediate Court Judge Maurice Mbishibishi, Erlinder's chief offense came in a 2009 article recounting a set of criminal indictments in Spain and France that accuse President Kagame and senior officials as responsible for the 1994 plane crash that killed the former presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi.

The offending passage: "... the crime that triggered... civilians-on-civilians killings in Rwanda."

For Prosecuting attorney Richard Muhumuza, the term "civilians-on-civilians" out-rightly negates the internationally accepted version that the Genocide was planned and orchestrated by the previous supposed extremist regime. A 600-page report published in February and another in August 2008 detail the events.

"The fact that (Erlinder) said that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 were civilians-on-civilians killings is evidence that he denies genocide," Judge Mbishibishi wrote in his ruling.

The case against the outspoken professor also relies on some of his work as a defense attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where, Judge Mbishibishi wrote, "he managed to prove that the genocide has (sic) not been planned nor executed by the military officials he was representing."

In this case, the court was referring to the Military I case which also includes Col Theoneste Bagosora, the alleged ‘brain’ behind the mass slaughter of Tutsis. The ICTR chamber however, cleared him of any responsibility – suggesting there was never a plan to exterminate Tutsis.

Again, Judge Mbishibishi concluded, this is evidence that Erlinder "denied or downplayed genocide."

Academics that have published widely on the Tutsi Genocide are also furious.

“There are no accidents: Erlinder is one of the world's leading deniers of the genocide against the Tutsi. For years he has noisily doubted that there was ever a plan by Hutu extremists to exterminate all the Tutsi, a truth embraced by the vast majority of those who have studied Rwanda,” writes Canadian Prof. Gerald Caplan, in The Globe and Mail newspaper.

The Gasabo court records cite another Erlinder article, identified as "Rwanda: no conspiracy, no genocide planning ... no genocide?" which argues that President Kagame avoided prosecution for his own crimes largely because of his close ties to the Clinton administration, which later acknowledged it did not do enough to stop the violence.

The court documents echo Rwanda’s sensitivity to revisionist histories of a "counter-genocide" that ascribe atrocities to both sides.

"Usually, in his publications, there is no distinction between genocide and civil war," Judge Mbishibishi wrote of Erlinder.

Fellow American Kurt Kerns, who has been Erlinder's closest adviser since his May 27 arrest in Kigali, expressed frustration in interviews with the Minnesota-based Star Tribune that the allegations against the William Mitchell College of Law professor largely rely on his recitation of facts and allegations made by others.

For example, prosecutor Muhumuza cites a 2006 letter Erlinder wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper describing President Kagame government as "the most repressive military dictatorship in Africa."

According to Kerns, Erlinder was merely quoting a story in the Economist magazine.

Erlinder has pleaded not guilty to all the accusations, adding, according to the newly released court records, "he did not intend to tarnish Rwanda's image." Erlinder's defense team, working through translators, also told the court that his statements, properly translated from English, constitute no crime.

In any case, they argued, he is protected by free speech guarantees both under the U.S. Constitution and the 54-nation Commonwealth block, which Rwanda joined last year.

In a 2008 essay titled The Great Rwanda "Genocide Coverup," the now embattled Prof. Erlinder acknowledged that under Rwanda’s strict laws against questioning the widely held version of events which destroyed Rwanda to its knees, "I too am a criminal."

The firry professor is now facing charges of "denying and downplaying genocide" and "spreading rumors ... capable of threatening the security of the Rwandan people."

As for Erlinder's 2008 admission that he could be considered a "criminal" under Rwandan law, Kerns said that Erlinder thought that since then, "they (Rwandans) had made strides in the right direction."

But before leaving for Rwanda, Erlinder told colleagues, US lawmakers, the US embassy in Kigali and the US State Department that if Rwandan authorities arrested him, it would prove otherwise.

"Well," Kerns said, "they did."

Appearing gaunt and tired last Monday before the Gasabo court, Erlinder, 62, was ordered held in "provisional" detention for another 30 days while prosecutors prepare formal charges that could carry penalties of between 10 and 20 years in prison. The court ruled that Erlinder's two hospitalizations since his arrest -- including one after a an alleged suicide -- failed to constitute grounds for release.

One of the key pieces of evidence against him: a federal lawsuit he filed in Oklahoma City last month accusing President Kagame, of triggering the Rwandan genocide by shooting down the previous president's plane. Two investigations have been conducted on this issue already.

The 2006 French contested investigations puts blame on President Kagame, while the recent massive investigation conducted with British aero-space experts, dubbed, the Mutsinzi Report, affirms that the extremists – including ex-First Lady Agathe Habyarimana killed the president.

Apart from the conflicting accounts of history, Rwanda's case against Erlinder has alarmed his defense team because none of the writings or statements cited in the court documents were made in Rwanda.

"It's a bizarre intellectual exercise," said Erlinder's main U.S. attorney, Kurt Kerns, who just left Rwanda this week, as he has another case of Genocide suspect Lazare Kobagaya to follow up on in the US state of Arkansas.

Additional reporting from the Star Tribune, The Globe and Mail, and agencies.

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 1:05 AM