12:23
rwandaexpress
Photo: Justice Hassan Bubakar Jallow.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Hassan Bubacar Jallow, has contested the fact that the ICTR Appeals Chamber ignored considering charges of conspiracy to commit genocide in the final sentence of Matthieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera.
Justice Jallow argued that Trial Chambers made errors by trying and sentencing both men to life imprisonment but dismissed the conspiracy to commit genocide charge, which make the core of the genocide accusations.
Both Matthieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera were president and vice president of the infamous former ruling party Mouvement Républicain National Pour La Démocratie et le Développement (MRND) in Rwanda.
In December 2011, the tribunal trial chambers sentenced the duo to life imprisonment after convicting them of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, rape and sexual violence.
The two convicts have appealed the sentence. However, Justice Jallow has requested the Tribunal Appeal Chambers to reconsider the need to correct these errors- which if corrected actually accumulate to the evidence of conspiracy.
Jallow said that both men should be tried for the crime of conspiracy to commit genocide since they had power to stop the killings that took place in Rwanda in 1994, but instead overlooked the situation as their political party members directly participated in genocide killings.
“After the two were found criminally responsible of both genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide, the Trial Chamber committed an error of law invalidating the Chamber’s decision when it failed to enter a conviction for conspiracy,” the prosecutor stated.
To support this contest, the Prosecution referred to Karemera’s speech of May 3, 1994 at former Kibuye prefectural office, which incited the killings of Tutsis in Bisesero area, western province of rwanda. The judges also noted that the accused took no action to prevent Interahamwe from raping, mutilating, and sexually assaulting Tutsi women and girls.
Ngirumpatse and Karemera were arrested in Mali and Togo respectively in June 1998 and transferred to Arusha a month later.
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