1:jMali..kila mala wewe ndio unapenda kuuliza source na kuhoji credibility ya sources,:Thats why sometimes i dont quote Newtimes when amtrying to prove something to you, so please nawewe kubali kama tunaongelea ICTR, let ICTR be the main source..
Ni wapi ICTR imekana kuwa hakukuwa na Genocide in Rwanda source please!!!!
Mimi nimekupatia link ya ICTR inayotoa hukumu kwa Bagosora for participating into Genocide!!
Yes, he was acquitted against consipiracy in Genocide lakini hii haiondoi kuwa what was happening was the Genocide and he with so many others were found guilty of that and punished for that...
NI WAPI MAHAKAMA IMEKANA RWANDAN GENOCIDE??hapa ni nani anabishana na mahakama mimi au wewe?
2:Issue ya undugu wa Watutsi waliokuwa nje ya nchi na wale waliokuwa ndani.. sidhani kama kuna haja ya ku explain manake this is not the debate..nakushauli fanya research on that:
Kila mtutsi aliyekuwa ukimbizini alikuwa na part of his/her family iliyobaki Rwanda:
3:Watutsi waliokuwa Rwanda hawakuishi kwa amani hata kidogo a simple google research itakuonyesha kuwa kulikuwa na vitendo vya mauaji dhidi ya wa Tutsi vingi tuu japo hii haikuitwa Genocide lakini mauaji yalikuwepo good example ni Bagogwe massacre just do a research on that::
Ndugu yangu hakuna siku nimewahi kujadiliana na nyinyi watu halafu nikashindwa kuleta source. Hiki unachofanya ni utoto. Kwani leo ndio mara ya kwanza kujadili hii ishu ya hukumu ya bagosora? Sikuona haja ya kutoa link kwa sababu ubishi huu tunajadili kila siku. Mimi nakuja sources credible nyinyi ndio mnaoleta magazeti ya Newstimes ya kagame hapa.
Au unadhani kuwa kila siku mimi ninahitaji ku-google kama nyinyi ili kujadili, hivyo ukinidai link unanisumbua? Haya hangaika na hizi hapa na please kama unabisha, njoo na facts.
ICTR: Rwandan genocide - no master plan (long version)
Published on : 19 December 2011 - 5:05pm | By
International Justice Tribune (
photo: rnw)
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Time has the same effect on trial judgements rendered by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as acid on limestone. On December 14, 2011, the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR reduced Colonel Bagosora's factual responsibility in the genocide to a minimum, and his life sentence to 35 years. After seventeen years of investigations and trials, the ICTR ends up with no mastermind behind the genocide.
By Thierry Cruvellier*
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It took 14 years from its creation for the ICTR to render the judgement that had been from the start the most eagerly-awaited and the most central to its work on the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, between April and July 1994. On December 18, 2008, it found Colonel Théoneste Bagosora guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Since 1994, Bagosora had been the ‘number one suspect by default' of the genocide. However, when it was issued, the judgement by the Trial Chamber appeared iconoclastic. After hearing 242 witnesses, admitting some 1,600 exhibits, producing 30,000 pages of transcripts and receiving 4,500 pages of closing arguments by the parties, the trial judges came to a decision that profoundly questioned the nature of the genocide in Rwanda as a carefully orchestrated crime.
Suspicious witnesses
Since 1998, the ICTR's chief prosecutors had asserted that the genocide was a conspiracy that had been relentlessly planned and executed by supporters of ‘Hutu Power', assembled around Colonel Bagosora, who was cabinet director in the Ministry of Defence at the time. From then on, Bagosora was the emblematic face of the proceedings carried out in Arusha.
Ten years later, when Bagosora was finally convicted, all elements of the conspiracy alleged by the Office of the Prosecutor were dismissed or found unconvincing. The creation and work of a military commission chaired by Bagosora in 1991 were not considered as criminal; the 1992-reported warning by the accused that he was going to "prepare the apocalypse" proved to come from two highly suspicious witnesses who contradicted themselves; Bagosora and others had played a role in the creation, arming and training of civil militias, but the judges could not conclude that "these efforts were directed at killing Tutsi civilians with the intention to commit genocide"; the organisation of civil defence was insufficient to claim conspiracy; the preparation of lists targeting Tutsis and members of the political opposition did "not show that the purpose of the lists was to identify Tutsis, as such, and to eliminate them", so Bagosora escaped the accusation of having participated; there was "considerable evidence" of death-squad activity in Rwanda before April 1994 and several sources say that Bagosora was a member of them. Yet the evidence was indirect, second-hand, proved nothing in legal terms, and did "not mean that [they were] preparing a genocide."
Historic judgement
The Bagosora judgement was undoubtedly one of the most scrupulously-written of all those reached by the Arusha tribunal. Rarely in the analysis of the birth of the genocide had a more nuanced tone been used. The extermination of Rwandan Tutsis had taken place, but its history was not that of a ‘tropical Nazism'.
"It is not argued that the accused simultaneously agreed to a plan, or that such a plan consisted of a single course of equally-divided or unified conduct," carefully wrote the judges.
"Instead, the proper inference to be drawn from the evidence is that at various times, each of the accused agreed to participate in a larger, lengthier effort to increasingly homogenise Rwandan society in favour of Hutu citizens, with the objective of killing Tutsi civilians, as required. It is their participation in this process – and the willingness to create or exploit various opportunities to achieve it – which is the hallmark of their agreement." This was a complex and almost volatile analysis. The 600-page decision also read like a painful inventory of the mediocrity of the assembled evidence and its devastating effects. It was a measure of the extraordinary flimsiness of the work carried out by the prosecution to support such extraordinarily heavy charges.
After the presidential plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, a wave of political assassinations marked the beginning of the massacres. There was no credible and reliable proof of Bagosora's direct participation, the trial judges wrote. But he was found guilty by inference. Considered to be the person having authority over the army at the time, the order to attack could only have come from him, said the judges. The same applied to the murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers on April 7. Bagosora knew and his inaction served to encourage the killers. He was therefore responsible.
Most of the conclusions on the other charges brought against the alleged ‘brains' of the genocide read like a litany of powerlessness. ‘The Prosecution has not presented any direct evidence that Bagosora…," repeated the judges tirelessly. But the accused knew that the soldiers under his authority were killing and, therefore, he was responsible.
No formal authority
Fifteen years after the events, Bagosora seemed punished in the same way that he was accused: by deduction, and by default. "A detailed analysis of the list of offices within the Ministry as well as the organisational chart reflects that the post of directeur de cabinet was the most senior one after that of the Minister in the Rwandan Ministry of Defence," said the judges. "He would replace the Minister in his absence. This occurred in April 1994 when Augustin Bizimana, the Minister of Defence, was on official mission in Cameroon."
During the three days in which the Minister was away, from 6-9 April, Bagosora exercised his authority. After 9 April, the Minister of Defence returned to the country and Bagosora's formal authority over the army was no longer legally apparent. The possibility of finding him guilty under the same legal principle disappeared. All the crimes allegedly committed by Bagosora after 9 April fell away, without exception. But the infamous colonel had nevertheless been found guilty and sentenced to life.
"The fact of daring to say with humility that, in the Bagosora case, there was insufficient factual evidence to substantiate the theory of an arrangement is a decision with considerable impact, especially in terms of political practices," said Rwanda expert André Guichaoua, after the 2008 judgement. He now describes Bagosora as a "temporary project manager."
Ruling
In its judgement, the Trial Chamber recalled that "when confronted with circumstantial evidence, it may only convict where it is the only reasonable inference." Three years later, the Appeals Chamber has just turned this very argument against the trial judges. In 300 pages, it slashed the trial judgement so deeply that, 17 years after the court was created, it seems almost impossible to understand what's the narrative of the genocide that has come out of the most important trial at the ICTR.
Because the appeals judges found that Bagosora's order or authorisation was not "the only reasonable inference" in the killings of 7-9 April, the direct responsibility of Bagosora in the murders was annulled. What's left? "The Appeals Chamber finds that Bagosora had sufficient knowledge of his subordinates' criminal conduct in Kigali on 7, 8, and 9 April 1994 to trigger his duty as a superior to prevent their crimes." Bagosora remains guilty as a superior who failed to prevent those killings, as well as a number of massacres in different parts of Kigali, and the killings at roadblocks in the capital city.
To have an idea of the basis on which Bagosora is finally convicted, one has to read and understand the following sentence: "While the Trial Chamber could not have relied upon the finding that Bagosora must have ordered or authorised the crimes to find that he bore superior responsibility for failing to fulfil his duty to prevent them, Bagosora's convictions may be upheld if the Trial Chamber's factual findings support the conclusion that Bagosora failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent these crimes." The Appeals Chamber found that they do – and only that.
Almost 18 years after the genocide, the ICTR essentially concluded that "there is no finding or sufficient evidence that Bagosora ordered or authorised any of the killings for which he was found to bear superior responsibility." He is solely held responsible for failing to prevent crimes committed by his subordinates over a period of 65 hours during which he had effective control. As a consequence, a majority of judges approved a reduction of his sentence from life to 35 years. Two dissenting judges called it a "monumental reduction." But it was the departure from the story of the "mastermind of the genocide" that appeared monumental. There was a genocide, yes, but it was brainless.
source:
ICTR: Rwandan genocide - no master plan (long version) | Radio Netherlands Worldwide
The media reports of the December 18 judgment of Chamber-1 at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda focused primarily on the convictions of three of four former top military leaders, who were the supposed "masterminds" of the Rwandan genocide. But, as those who have followed the ICTR closely know, convictions of members of the former Rwandan government and military are scarcely newsworthy.
Ever since former ICTR Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and ICTR Chief Investigative Prosecutor Michael Hourigan went public in 2007-8 exposing US-UK manipulations to grant de facto impunity to current Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his henchmen, between 1997 and the present, convictions of the vanquished in the Rwanda war are a given.
The real news was that ALL of the top Rwandan military officers, including the supposedly infamous Colonel Bagosora, were found not guilty of conspiracy or planning to commit genocide. And Gen. Gratien Kabiligi, a senior member of the general staff was acquitted of all charges! The others were found guilty of specific acts committed by subordinates, in specific places, at specific times - not an overall conspiracy to kill civilians, much less Rwandan-Tutsi civilians.
This raises the more profound question: if there was no conspiracy and no planning to kill ethnic civilians, can the tragedy that engulfed Rwanda properly be called "a genocide" at all? Or, was it closer to a case of civilians being caught up in war-time violence, like the Eastern Front in WWII, rather than the planned behind-the-lines killings in Nazi death camps? The ICTR judgment found the former.
The Court specifically found that the actions of Rwandan military leaders, both before any after the April 6, 1994 assassination of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarima, and Burundi's President Ntaryamira, were consistent with war-time conditions and the massive chaos brought about by the four-year war of invasion from Uganda by Gen. Paul Kagame's RPF/Ugandan army, which seized power in July 1994.
Although the Chamber did not specifically mention more recent events, it is worth noting that this is the same Kagame government that was named in a UN Security Council commissioned report on December 12, 2008 as having invaded the eastern Congo (with Uganda) in 1996 and again in 1998 and as occupying an area 15-times the size of Rwanda since that time. Similar UN Security Council reports in 2001, 2002 and 2003, make clear that Rwanda and Uganda's economic rape of the eastern Congo, and the resulting 6 million-plus civilian deaths, have long been an "open secret."
As Lead Defense Counsel for Major Aloys Ntabakuze, who was convicted of three specific crimes committed by troops without evidence they were acting under his authority, I would say the judgment was actually a victory. Our defense was based on previously suppressed contemporaneous UN and declassified US documents that showed Kagame's RPF as the war-time aggressor, which was responsible for the assassination of the former President and for preventing military intervention to end the predicted civilian massacres.
The ICTR oral judgment specifically refers to this "alternative" explanation of the tragic events in Rwanda, as being a basis for rejecting the conspiracy and planning charges against the former military leaders. But the documents show more.
As early as May 17, 1994, UNHCR was receiving reports of massive civilian killings by Kagame's RPF in the 1/3 of Rwanda they had occupied since April 22. Other documents from August, September and October 1994 describe a conscious attempt by UN and US government officials to "cover-up" reports of RPF killings, including memos to Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Apparently, US policy to create "impunity" for Kagame began nearly as soon as he took power.
Had the US "impunity policy" not been in place, Kagame might well have been prosecuted along with Military-1 defendants Bagosora and Nsengiumva, as ICTR Prosecutor Michael Hourigan recommended in early 1997. Kagame's responsibility for the assassination of Habyarimana has been known to the ICTR Prosecutor since at least that time, if not early.
Had the US "impunity policy" not been in place, Kagame might well have spent the last decade awaiting trial at the ICTR, rather than getting rich from the resources of the Congo, and the blood of millions of Africans.
Peter Erlinder is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN. He is a past-President of the National Lawyers Guild, a Lead Defense Counsel-UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the President of the ICTR-ADAD (Association des Avocats de la Defense). E-mail peter.erlinder@wmitchell.edu
source: jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2008/12/rwanda-no-conspiracy-no-genocide.php
