Catholic Church Wants Arrested Army Officers Tried By Foreigners

Rwanda: Catholic Church Wants Arrested Army Officers Tried By Foreigners

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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)

12 June 2008
Posted to the web 12 June 2008

Kigali

The Prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda Archbishop Thaddée Ntihinyurwa is not convinced that the church's lost clergy will have justice citing possible interference from the authorities with the case, RNA reports.

The Rwanda Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that it had detained four officers in connection with the killings of 13 churchmen of the Kabgayi Diocese in Southern Rwanda.

It is alleged that on June 05 1994, the arrested officers killed Archbishop Ntihinyurwa's predecessor Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyumva along with the others in revenge for the massacre of their families.

Detained are Brig Gen Wilson Gumisiriza, Maj. Wilson Ukwishaka, Capt. John Butera and Capt. (Rtd) Dieudonné Rukeba.

Archbishop Ntihinyurwa said on Thursday that as far as this case is concerned, justice can only be rendered by foreigners not Rwandans that are mostly likely to be compromised by the establishment.

The trail can only be fair if conducted by foreigners or out of Rwanda by probably the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Archbishop Ntihinyurwa told the BBC Great Lakes Service.

However, ICTR Chief Prosecutor Hassan Bubucar Jallow dismissed on Thursday any suggestion that the court should request Rwanda to hand over the officers.

With the possible exception of the government, the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful institution in Rwanda. It always had been intertwined with the political establishment, historians say.

The church ran 60 percent of Rwandan schools, even enforcing strict quotas that limited Tutsi enrollment to their proportion of the overall population. It operated clinics and relief services. In the rural areas, which accounted for over 70 percent of the population, often the church functioned effectively like the social services department of the government.

Archbishop Ntihinyurwa - a very senior voice of the Catholics here - was himself the Bishop of Cyangugu - now part of Western province from 1981 all through the Genocide till 1996.

Church documents show that priests even adopted the language of the genocidaires, routinely referring to Tutsi as inyenzi, or cockroaches.

As member of the ruling MRND party bureau, Archbishop Nsengiyumva wore the MRND budge and the religious cross as well, people well-versed with the pre-Genocide events tell RNA.

The official line laid down by the Vatican, and still followed by the church hierarchy in Rwanda, is that individual priests, and not the church, must be held accountable for the Genocide.

Defense Lawyers at the UN Court meanwhile dismissed confirmation of the arrests by Chief Prosecutor Hassan Bubucar at a Press conference at the court's seat as "manipulation of the ICTR to create impunity".

According to ICTR association of Defense lawyers - ADAD -, by announcing the arrest, the Prosecutor has confirmed that members of the former government or military are NOT responsible for all crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994, as the OTP had previously maintained.

ADAD head Prof. Peter Erlinder last week presented a paper at the University of Paris which details UN and U.S. government documents from 1994 which allege that in May 1994 - UNCHR and the Red Cross reported "20-30 bodies headless bodies every 30 minutes" in the Akagera River then controlled by the RPF.

Relevant Links Central Africa Human Rights International Organizations and Africa Religion Rwanda

Canadian Prof. Peter Elinder is defending Major Aloys Ntabakuze - a key suspect in the 1994 Genocide currently at the court's detention centre in Tanzania.

Major Aloys Ntabakuze is a former commander of Kanombe Paramilitary battalion based in Kigali. He is co-accuseed along with Colonel Theoneste Bagosora - considered the brain behind the mass slaughter and General Gratien Kabiligi - the former head of military operations of the army. Lieutenant Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva - the former army commander of Gisenyi region is also party.

From the same document that RNA has seen, it is claimed that U.S. Undersecretary of State George Moose reported in September 1994 that the RPF was killing "10,000 civlians a month" in one small part of Rwanda.

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