ICTR Prisoners on Hunger Strike

40 of 55 inmates in a Tanzanian prison awaiting trial at the ICTR have gone on a hunger strike to protest the scheduled transfer of three cases to Rwanda. According to their signed statement, the inmates do not believe that the Rwandan judicial system will provide the defendants with a fair trial:

On 7 September, the ICTR prosecutor requested that three on the six prisoners awaiting the start of their trials be transferred to Rwandan court in order to meet the deadline for the end of the ICTR mandate in December 2008. No decision has yet been delivered for this motion.

In a letter dated 5 October and signed by 40 on the 55 persons currently held in Arusha, the interested parties asked the president and the judges of this UN tribunal “to confirm the independence of the ICTR” by refusing any transfer to Rwanda.

They instead asked to the chamber presidents “to act in concert to schedule without any further delay the proceedings for the six prisoners still awaiting their trials”.

The signatories suggest that if the ICTR would not be able to try them, that its president should “in convenient time ask the Security Council to prolong the mandate of this tribunal consequently or to transfer some non completed trials to courts in countries other than Rwanda”.

The prisoners argue that the motions of the prosecutor “only fit the tripartite agreement between the USA, the United Kingdom and the leaders of the RPF in power in Kigali aiming to quickly end the mandate of the ICTR in order to protect the members of that front from criminal prosecution for crimes which they committed in Rwanda during the jurisdictional period of this tribunal”.

The inmates’ fears are not without foundation. Rwanda’s ordinary courts, which would be used to try the three suspects — Lieutenant Ildephonse Hategekimana, Gaspard Kanyarukiga, and Yussuf Munyakazi — are plagued by lengthy pre-trial detentions, trials that limit the defendant’s right of confrontation and ability to call witnesses, convictions based on insufficient evidence, and the absence of fair and effective appellate review.

That said, the ICTR has not only made it very clear that it will only transfer the cases if Rwanda guarantees that the defendants will receive a fair trial, it has even insisted on the right to send representatives to observe the trials themselves. Presumably, Rwanda’s obligation to cooperate with the Tribunal (Article 28 of the ICTR Statute) would authorize the ICTR to pre-empt a trial that was not proceeding fairly. If so, the transfers do not seem particularly objectionable.