Peter Erlinder Responds To ICTR’s Sanction

Source : AfrobeatRadio

Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha Tanzania have removed Peter Erlinder, law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota, and defense counsel for a major Rwandan genocide suspect, Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze. Mr. Erlinder was removed because he refused to continue the case. Mr. Erlinder said he did not appear because he feared his life would be in danger from the Rwandan government. Tribunal spokesman, Roland Amoussouga, called Mr. Erlinder’s claims an “excuse” and his conduct “unprofessional.” “He is no longer a counselor in the tribunal here,” and that “He has no standing.”

AfrobeatRadio’s Wuyi Jacobs spoke to Peter Erlinder:

Transcript:

AR/Wuyi Jacobs: How would you responds to the ICTR sanctions on you for not returning to Arusha, Tanzania?

Professor Peter Erlinder in handcuffs in a Kigali courtroom, with Kennedy Ogetto, the Kenyan ICTR lawyer who flew to Kigali to defend him when he was arrested after flying there to defend Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.

Peter Erlinder: Well, I believe that returning to Arusha puts my life in danger or my liberty at danger and I asked for security, and assurances from the Rwanda government that my safety will be protected through the United Nations, and, they weren’t able to provide me with that. But even if I had been provided with that, I continue to suffer psychological reactions to my detention in Rwanda, and I am not sure I could’ve functioned well as lawyer for my client.

I requested that the tribunal allow me to appear for the four hours, this is only four hours after eight years of this trial, keep in mind, to allow me make my final argument by video. The tribunal has allowed many witnesses to appear by video. It’s a very common thing. Or to allow me to make the arguement in the Hague, which is where the Appeals chamber is based. They denied that, insisted that I appear in person, which is, I think putting my life at risk.
They also denied postponing the hearing until June, which is when my co-counsel, who doesn’t face the same threats that I do, could have been able to make the arguement. He had been ill, and had actually been in an accident. Or to allow me to replace him with another lawyer who would also not be under threat. So it’s not just a question of my not appearing there, it’s the court not being willing to accept any of the other alternatives that will not require me to place my life at risk.
I also have to add, that my client waived my appearance at the hearing and was willing to go forward himself because he’s been found not guilty of fully ninety-five percent of the charges against him, and there are four rather small incidents remaining in the case. We’ve had them fully briefed. He shouldn’t have been convicted of them because they’re incidents that were not charged in the indictment. And he waived my presence at the hearing and was prepared to go forward himself, but the chamber will not permit him to do so.

AR: What is the impact of this sanction on the case?

Peter Erlinder: The impact on the case is likely not to be very much at all. It’s, as I mention, a four hour oral argument and for relatively minor issues after eight years of trial.

Peter Erlinder’s arrival back to the USA

VIDEO: Rwanda, Congo and Law Professor Peter Er…, posted with vodpod

Rwanda’s unresolved secret history

By Timothy Kalyegira – The Daily Monitor, July 4 2010

The June 19 attempt on the life of the former Rwandan Chief of Defence Forces, Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, was the final event in a slowly gathering cluster of incidents, trends, and question marks over Rwanda since 2006.

That was when the now-retired French anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued arrest warrants for nine top Rwandan army officers (including Nyamwasa) whom he implicated in the shooting down of the Rwandan presidential jet on April 6, 1994.

Since the attempt on Nyamwasa’s life, story after story in the Western news media have focused on nothing but the theme of a country once on the path to recovery from genocide in 1994 and now headed for self-destruction.

As if to snub Rwanda, the deputy director-general in South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, Jackson McKay, said last week, on June 24, that Nyamwasa had applied for political asylum and had been granted it, despite earlier appeals by the Rwanda government for him to be extradited to stand trial.

“It is hard to imagine that a shooting in Johannesburg could spell instability in the distant heart of Africa,” commented London’s The Economist — one of the world’s most influential news publications – on June 22. “But that is what has happened…opposition within Mr [Paul] Kagame’s own set may be brewing…Rwanda has had a number of unexplained killings. For example, Seth Sendashonga, a moderate Hutu who served as interior minister after the genocide, was shot dead in 1998 in Nairobi…Dozens of Rwandan army officers are thought to have been shot, have disappeared or have had accidents. Some harboured secrets and knew about cover-ups of government revenge killings after the genocide.”

For the first time, a major Anglo-Western publication, reported on the assassination of Sedashonga at all or in a sympathetic light and with a subtle hint at who might have ordered that shooting in Nairobi.
Erlinder arrest

The Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper in the United States, in its June 23 edition echoed this new air of suspicion over President Kagame after the arrest of Peter Erlinder, the lawyer of the opposition leader Victoire Ingabire: “Civilised nations don’t throw defence attorneys into prison. That Rwanda did suggests that Kagame has something to hide…”

The African Bulletin of June 30 suggested a reason that Nyamwasa could have been targeted: “[T]he arrests, the leaks and assassinations abroad, successful or not, accumulate…General Kayumba [Nyamwasa] is potentially the main rival of Paul Kagame. The two men first met in Uganda and they worked together in the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Between them, they know all about big and little secrets of the Rwandan authorities…Paul Kagame begins to irritate even his biggest supporters…”

The Associated Press published a story with this headline on June 29: `Rwanda’s Hutus live in fear of attacks, repression’ and the BBC World Service, in its main world news on June 28, broadcast a news item on a new report by a human rights group on the flight of Hutu refugees in Uganda who are being hunted down, arrested and some even killed.

This marks the first time since the ruling RPF government took power in Kigali in 1994 that the mainstream media in the English-speaking Western nations has portrayed the Hutu of Rwanda as victims. On June 29, the Rwanda government fought back. Radio Rwanda, in a news broadcast, said: “President Paul Kagame has criticised the international rights groups like the Human Rights Watch which have continued to tarnish Rwanda’s image by publishing baseless information aimed at undermining the country’s efforts of the last 16 years.”

The Western media largely ignored Kagame’s press conference and the barrage of criticism has continued. The question then is: Has Rwanda been making concrete strides in these 16 years, as Kagame said, or was it a case of 16 years spent glossing over dark, sensitive secrets and unresolved conflicts within the ranks of the elite in power in Kigali?

Because the RPF was an English-speaking group at the time it invaded Rwanda in 1990 and its mentor, President Yoweri Museveni was still admired by the West, this aura rubbed off on the RPF and it received consistently positive coverage from the Anglo-West’s news media right through to and after the RPF’s victory in July 1994.

But, as an exiled Rwanda journalist Charles Kabonero told KFM’s Hot Seat show on Friday, June 25, there was never press freedom in RPF’s Rwanda from the beginning in 1994.

So while the regional and world media focused on the genocide and Hutu’s role in it, there was never sufficient attention given to these highly sensitive reports and rumours of Tutsi-on-Tutsi assassinations and mysterious deaths.

The recent attempt on Lt. Gen. Nyamwasa’s life, the exiling of the former foreign intelligence director Col. Patrick Karegyeya, several journalists gunned down or in exile, ambassadors fleeing into exile from their posts in Europe — and most of these being Tutsi — have puzzled many in the English-speaking West. The truth is, had the West not romanticised the RPF and had the RPF not muzzled the media, none of the recent developments would have surprised anybody.

RPF founding

The RPF from its founding in Uganda in 1989 was always steeped in intrigue. When President Museveni praised the late Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema at the Liberation Day ceremonies at Kigali’s Amahoro Stadium on July 4, 2009, a mummer went through the crowd and tensions rose within the Rwandan army.

This seemed strange to observers, as this was the equivalent to praising Nelson Mandela and it stirs controversy in South Africa’s ANC party. Barely had the RPF’s guerrilla war started in October 1990 than four of its top officers Maj. Gen. Rwigyema, Maj. Peter Bayingana, Maj Chris Bunyenyezi and Maj. Frank Munyaneza were dead, murdered in still unexplained circumstances but the killings clearly a work from within the Tutsi rebel ranks.

A Tutsi from Mbarara in western Uganda and former FRONASA soldier, Maj. Adam Wasswa, was the deputy commander of the RPA to Rwigyema at the time of the Rwanda invasion.

On July 28, 1991, as Maj. Wasswa was travelling in a Toyota Land Cruiser with Kagame for an RPF High Command meeting in Rwanda, the vehicle is said to have been involved in an accident. Wasswa died. An RPA Captain Kairangwa in the vehicle also died. To this day, the facts of this accident have never been explained.

For the last 10 years, President Kagame has focused Rwanda and the eyes of the West on economic growth, fibre optic Internet cables, laptop computers to schools, and creating an image of effective, disciplined government and the making of an African Singapore. Swept under the carpet were all the dark skeletons of the RPF dating back to 1990.

As Congo Marks 50th Anniversary of Independence, Human Rights Abuses Rise in Congo and Neighboring Rwanda

Tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of Congolese independence from colonial Belgian rule. On June 30, 1960, the new prime minister of the independent Congolese government, Patrice Lumumba, declared an end to the slavery of colonialism and a new beginning for the country and the liberation of the entire continent of Africa. But today, jubilee independence celebrations in the Democratic Republic of Congo are marred by ongoing violence and increasing political repression, in particular the recent murder of Congo’s leading human rights activist Floribert Chebeya. Meanwhile, repression is on the rise in neighboring Rwanda, as well, ahead of scheduled elections this August, which incumbent president Paul Kagame is widely expected to win.

Guests:

Peter Erlinder, American attorney who was arrested in Rwanda last month, held for nearly three weeks, and released on health grounds. He is a lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. He was jailed shortly after arriving in Rwanda to help with the legal defense of an opposition presidential candidate charged with “genocide ideology.” Erlinder himself stands accused of violating laws barring the denial of the Rwandan genocide.

Alafuele Kalala, Congolese pro-democracy activist who ran for president in his country in 2006.

AMY GOODMAN: Tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of Congolese independence from colonial Belgian rule. On June 30th, 1960, the new prime minister of the independent Congolese government, Patrice Lumumba, declared an end to the slavery of colonialism and a new beginning for the country and the liberation of the entire continent of Africa.

But today jubilee independence celebrations in the Democratic Republic of Congo are marred by ongoing violence and increasing political repression, in particular the recent murder of Congo’s leading human rights activist Floribert Chebeya. He was found dead in his car earlier this month, a day after being called to meet the national police chief. The Joseph Kabila government has announced several investigations and suspended the police chief, but no charges have been filed, and the cause of Chebeya’s death remains unknown.

Meanwhile, repression is on the rise in neighboring Rwanda, as well, ahead of the scheduled elections this August, which incumbent President Paul Kagame is widely expected to win. Two opposition leaders have been arrested. Dozens of opposition party members have been detained. Last week a critical journalist was murdered, a case in which Rwandan authorities deny any involvement.

American attorney and law professor, Peter Erlinder, was also arrested in Rwanda last month, and he was held for nearly three weeks and released on health grounds. Peter Erlinder is a lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. He was jailed shortly after arriving in Rwanda to help with the legal defense of an opposition presidential candidate charged with “genocide ideology.” Erlinder himself stands accused of violating laws barring the denial of the Rwandan genocide. We turn now to Peter Erlinder, who joins us from the Twin Cities, from Minneapolis.

Peter, welcome to Democracy Now! How are you felling? What happened to you?

PETER ERLINDER: Good morning, Ms. Goodman. Of course, I’m feeling much better now that I’m out of detention, but it strikes me that the earlier piece with Pilger is actually an introduction to this piece, because the reality is that most people in the United States don’t know about the US support for the Kagame dictatorship or the US responsibility for about ten million deaths in the eastern Congo, most of which have been the result of the invasions of the Congo by Rwanda and Uganda in the 1990s and the continued occupation of the Congo today. There’s been a massive disservice done to the American people regarding the truth of their government’s involvement in Central Africa. And unfortunately, until we’re able to find the documents in the UN files that tell the other story, the entire world has been misled with respect to what happened in Rwanda in 1994.

AMY GOODMAN: Why were you arrested? Peter Erlinder, why were you arrested?

PETER ERLINDER: Well, you’ll have to ask that of the Rwandan government, wouldn’t you? I was having breakfast and a croissant, finishing a document that I was working on for my client, and six large men surrounded me and took me away from the hotel. As to why that happened, I suspect that only the Rwandan leaders know.

AMY GOODMAN: They claim that you tried to commit suicide. Is that true?

PETER ERLINDER: Well, it seems to me that there are so many more important issues to talk about, like the ten million people that have been killed in the Congo. The state of my health and getting through that issue, it seems—or that circumstance, seems to me to be not the most important question to talk about. And because it was necessary for me to go public in court, with all of the various ills that I have as a guy who’s getting older, I think I’ve made a complete record of all that up until now, and I’m not talking about that in the media. I’d rather talk about the conditions of the US support for the military dictatorships in Central Africa, which I think is the much larger question.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don’t you talk about who you were representing there and what is the situation in Rwanda today—

PETER ERLINDER: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: —and as it relates to Congo, as well.

PETER ERLINDER: OK, thanks a lot. Yeah, I went there to represent Madame Victoire Ingabire, who had left Rwanda before 1994 to study in Europe. She returned at the beginning of this year with the idea of running for the presidency against the current president, Paul Kagame. Within a few hours after she arrived in Kigali, she went to the memorial for the Tutsis who were killed in the genocide, and she raised the question as to why it was that there were only Tutsis that were memorialized, when even the government says that moderate Hutus and Tutsis were the victims. And based on her questioning of the Tutsi being the only victims, she herself was charged with genocide ideology.

When I arrived in Rwanda, she had been charged. And I went there to consult with her to see if there was anything I could do. And five days later, I was arrested myself, based on, we later found out, my writings, written in the United States that were published on the web in English, which is both a medium that most Rwandans don’t have access to and a language that they don’t understand. It would have to be translated into Kinyarwandan in order for the ordinary Kinyarwandan to—only ordinary Rwandan to know what my articles were about at all.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined from Washington, DC by the Congolese pro-democracy activist Alafuele Kalala, who ran for president in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! on this eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo under Patrice Lumumba. Your thoughts today about where your country is?

ALAFUELE KALALA: That’s a very—thank you. It’s a very difficult question. I think that the country is nowhere. It’s completely destroyed. In fact, it’s a nightmare for most Congolese, and they don’t know what fifty years of independence, formal independence, I should say, means. So, people are suffering. The country is completely bankrupted, at all levels. I say it’s a quintuple bankruptcy: political, economic, social, military, cultural. So, the country is nowhere. It’s completely destroyed. That’s what I can say in a few words.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the death of the human rights activist Floribert Chebeya?

ALAFUELE KALALA: Yeah, as I said it in my—just to summarize how I view it, it’s that this is a horrible murder that reveals the nature of the regime. It was shocking, but I was not surprised, because a couple of months ago I spoke with someone close to the Congolese government who told me, making a comparison between the Mobutu regime and the Kabila regime in the way they were treating human rights activists or human rights pro-democracy movement in the Congo. He said, during the Mobutu years, Mobutu was very cautious with human rights activists. Here we are dealing with people who don’t care, who arrest, torture and even kill pro-democracy activists and human rights activists. So that was told to me just a couple of months ago. And when this happened, I was shocked, but I was not surprised.

In fact, they tried to send a shockwave throughout the Congolese community, the Congolese society, in general, because if they can kill a leading human rights activist, a standing, leading human rights activist, respected in the world, what can they do of ordinary Congolese? And they are trying to frighten the human rights activists in the Congo not to take the ordinary tough stand against them.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, there—

ALAFUELE KALALA: So it’s a sad day for Congelese and for the world, I should say.

AMY GOODMAN: Eve Ensler and other women’s rights activists have been trying to shine the spotlight on what’s been happening in the eastern Congo, the massive number of rapes by soldiers and others there. People hear, and they think, what can we do? It’s so far away. Can you talk about the US role in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

ALAFUELE KALALA: Yeah. I should say, the past, the present and the future. What is happening in the Congo now, I summarize it saying that it’s fifty years of American foreign policy at work. The Americans played a role in the assassination of Lumumba; it’s a secret for no one. They put Mobutu in power and supported him unconditionally, allowing him to destroy an otherwise wealthy country. They knew everything that was happening. I would refer, if I had some time, to an editorial that Jim Hoagland put in the Washington Post in 1993 saying briefly that successive American administration knew everything that Mobutu was doing in the Congo, but they considered it to be a small Cold War tax on Zairians, as it was called at that time. So now, I am—OK, that was explained with the Cold War. I don’t think that it’s a complete explanation of the American role in the Congo. In my opinion, it shows the power and the influence of mining companies on the American foreign policy in the Congo, in particular.

Unfortunately, I thought that after the Cold War, the American administration was going to amend its act and allow the people of the Congo to chart a new course. Unfortunately, in the 2006 elections, they imposed—they worked with other Western countries to impose Kabila on the Congo. It was a sham election. And now we are witnessing a total collapse, deliquency of the country, because we are dealing with a widespread corruption on top of the violence that they use against even ordinary people, political activists, human rights activists. So, so far, to date, the US administration has—

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

ALAFUELE KALALA: —played a negative role in the Congo. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have—

ALAFUELE KALALA: They also supported Rwanda in its invasion of Congo. So, so far, it has been a totally negative role in the Congo.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we will continue the discussion. Alafuele Kalala, Congolese pro-democracy activist, former presidential candidate in Democratic Republic of Congo, and Peter Erlinder, thank you so much.

DemocracyNow

PETER ERLINDER IN NAIROBI

NAIROBI, Kenya –

A U.S. lawyer released from a Rwanda prison on medical grounds credited America’s Secretary of State with his release but said Sunday the U.S. Embassy did not help him secure food or medicine while in prison.

Peter Erlinder, 62, said he had to sleep on a concrete floor without a blanket and without assistance from the embassy after his May 28 arrest in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. The Minnesota law professor thanked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying Rwanda shouldn’t arrest lawyers but said embassy officials in Kigali and Nairobi have not helped much.

U.S. Embassy officials in Nairobi did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Associated Press.

“My government insisted that I take my medications from my captors rather than bringing me medications directly,” Erlinder told a news conference in Nairobi, his first public comments since his arrest. “It was impossible for them to arrange a doctor whom I would pay so that I wouldn’t have to get my food and my medication from my captors.”

Erlinder did not outright say that he feared taking food from Rwandan authorities, but that was the implication. He added that it wasn’t clear to him that “my own embassy was working in my interests.” He did not elaborate.

A Rwandan judge ruled Thursday that Erlinder, a lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, should be freed from prison on medical grounds. Erlinder said he would soon go to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He did not explain his health problems and declined to comment on his statements in a Rwandan court that he had attempted suicide in prison.

Rwanda’s top prosecutor said after the medical release that he would continue his investigation of Erlinder, who said Sunday he would return to Rwanda to face charges if called by the court to do so. Erlinder has not yet been charged, but Rwandan authorities detained Erlinder on suspicion of what it calls minimizing the country’s genocide.

That fact did not prevent Erlinder from making new statements that could anger the government of Rwanda, which has laws against minimizing the 1994 genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, the vast majority of them ethnic Tutsis, were massacred by extremist Hutus over 100 days.

International accounts of the violence say at least 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during Rwanda’s genocide, which began after President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was brought down in April 1994.

Erlinder has said there are two sides of the story, and said Sunday that there may be enough evidence to show that more ethnic Hutus died than Tutsis, a statement that could anger the government of President Paul Kagame.

“There is no question that there was a genocide in Rwanda. I’ve never denied it, and the prosecutors, after scouring all of my publications, were not able to find one time that I denied that there was a genocide against Tutsis,” said Erlinder, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.

“What I did say is that the story that this terrible genocide occurred after the assassination of (then Rwandan President Juvenal) Habyarimana was not something that had been long planned before the assassination, not because I say so but because that was the finding of the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda),” he said.

Erlinder was in Rwanda to help with the legal defense of opposition leader Victoire Ingabire. Ingabire, a Hutu, wants to run for president in Aug. 9 elections, challenging incumbent President Kagame, a Tutsi. But she was arrested in April and charged with promoting a genocidal ideology. She was freed on bail but her passport was seized and she cannot leave Kigali.

Erlinder said he does not believe the conventional story line of the Rwandan genocide based on documents from the U.S. and U.N. that have recently been made public. He said the U.S. government has “systematically suppressed” evidence of the genocide.

Erlinder also said he can no longer act as an attorney for Ingabire. Choking back tears, he thanked his two Kenyan lawyers for traveling to Rwanda to defend him even though they could have been arrested. He also complained that only one of his lawyers has been given a U.S. visa and said he will not leave Kenya until his other lawyer is also given a visa.

Source: Associated Press

Peter Erlinder relâché

Erlinder et ses avocats ont remporté leur appel déposé lundi dernier : L’avocat américain de Victoire Ingabire a finalement été relâché aujourd’hui 17 juin pour raison médicale. Le professeur de droit et avocat avait été arrêté il y a 20 jours et a été accusé de négationnisme du génocide rwandais.
Depuis son arrestation, Peter Erlinder a été conduit à trois reprises à l’hôpital, pour, notamment une tentative de suicide. Erlinder a donc l’autorisation de retourner aux Etats-Unis, mais devra collaborer avec le parquet rwandais, pour instruire son dossier. “Je suis heureux de ce dénouement” a affirmé l’avocat kenyan de Peter Erlinder, Otachi Gershom. La date du procès d’Erlinder n’a pas encore été fixée. Victoire Ingabire quant à elle n’est pas sûre que Peter Erlinder pourra la défendre. “J’espère qu’il pourra me défendre”, a-t-elle déclaré. “J’espère que je pourrai le plus tôt possible défendre ma cause devant le tribunal”, a-t-elle ajouté.

Grandslacs.info

Alerte: Le pouvoir de Kigali est déterminé à tuer l’otage américain Peter Erlinder

Billet d’humeur d’Eugène Shimamungu (Newsletter n°30)

Le Département d’état américain doit se méfier : le pouvoir de Kigali n’a plus rien à perdre avec l’incarcération de Peter Erlinder. Il est déterminé à tuer l’otage américain s’il ne reçoit pas des concessions de la part de Barack Obama, qui jusqu’ici n’a pas daigné recevoir Paul Kagame à la Maison Blanche. D’ores et déjà, le Département d’Etat américain doit utiliser une terminologie appropriée. Me Peter Erlinder est un otage et non un repris de justice. L’Etat rwandais est un état terroriste, et il faut que cela soit clairement dit avec toutes les conséquences qui s’en suivraient.

Devant la justice rwandaise – ou de Paul Kagame plus précisément -, Me Erlinder se trouve devant pire qu’un tribunal islamique ! Une justice de terreur que rien ne pourra arrêter, sauf la réaction de la Maison Blanche. Le silence de Barrack Obama ou les réactions timides des officiels américains ne vont qu’empirer les choses. Le Président américain devrait prendre position ouvertement soit en menaçant le pouvoir rwandais soit en acceptant les concessions. Dans cette histoire il ne faut pas attendre la réaction de Hillary Clinton (même si celle-ci n’a pas encore mis le pied au Rwanda), dont on sait que c’est son mari qui a fait de Kagame ce qu’il est aujourd’hui. C’est donc Barack Obama qui doit intervenir lui-même. Rappelons que le bras de fer a été engagé par le Président américain lui-même lors de son discours à Accra où il a visé presque nommément Paul Kagame comme le trublion des Grands Lacs :

« Soyons bien clairs : l’Afrique ne correspond pas à la caricature grossière d’un continent perpétuellement en guerre. Mais si l’on est honnête, pour beaucoup trop d’Africains, le conflit fait partie de la vie ; il est aussi constant que le soleil. On se bat pour des territoires et on se bat pour des ressources. Et il est toujours trop facile à des individus sans conscience d’entraîner des communautés entières dans des guerres entre religions et entre tribus. »

« … nous devons nous élever contre l’inhumanité parmi nous. Il n’est jamais justifiable – jamais justifiable – de cibler des innocents au nom d’une idéologie. C’est un arrêt de mort, pour toute société, que de forcer des enfants à tuer dans une guerre. C’est une marque suprême de criminalité et de lâcheté que de condamner des femmes à l’ignominie continuelle et systémique du viol. Nous devons rendre témoignage de la valeur de chaque enfant au Darfour et de la dignité de chaque femme au Congo. »

Ces extraits démontrent très bien que Barack Obama visait deux personnes : Omar el Béchir et Paul Kagame, et bien plus Paul Kagame qu’Omar el Béchir.

Pourquoi Me Erlinder va être tué

Depuis le pied à terre au Rwanda de Victoire Ingabire, la situation politique rwandaise s’est gravement détériorée et empirée depuis l’arrivée de Me Peter Erlinder. Le pouvoir de Kigali a montré jusqu’à quelles extrémités il pouvait aller. Emprisonnements d’opposants, harcèlements de prétendants au fauteuil présidentiel à la prochaine élection présidentielle. Faut-il rappeler qu’à 70 jours des élections aucun candidat de l’opposition n’a été autorisé à se présenter ? Un proverbe dit « plus le singe monte en hauteur, mieux on voit son c… ». Conduit à l’hôpital suite à un malaise, les officiels rwandais dont le porte-parole de la police rwandaise Eric Kayiranga ont prétendu que Me Erlinder avait tenté de se suicider, plus tard on a appris des mêmes sources que Me Erlinder était un malade mental. Pour un malade mental et un suicidaire, moi aussi j’y ai cru un instant, simplement parce que le célèbre avocat a osé se jeter dans la gueule d’un loup affamé, tout en sachant très bien qu’il allait être dévoré sans ménagement. Mais il y a des causes qui forcent le respect notamment celle du Rwanda et des Rwandais face à un régime autoritaire et sanguinaire. Après les déclarations du porte-parole de la police, les autorités rwandaises devaient assumer leurs propos : soit Me Erlinder est un malade mental, et il faut le relâcher et le confier à un asile psychiatrique, soit il est en bonne santé et il doit subir le cours de la justice ! C’est ainsi que les autorités rwandaises se sont vite dédites et confirmé que Me Erlinder n’était pas malade, et qu’il n’avait pas tenté de suicider.

Les diverses péripéties dans cette histoire ont montré que le pouvoir de Kigali n’avait pas arrêté Me Peter Erlinder pour « idéologie du génocide » (accusation officielle), mais simplement parce qu’il avait osé porter plainte en Oklahoma contre Paul Kagame. Celui-ci a évidemment pris peur que la plainte ne s’oriente vers un nouveau mandat d’arrêt international,  - après celui de la France et de l’Espagne –  cette fois-ci émis par le pays qui, jusque là, l’a protégé: les Etats-Unis. Et c’est ceci la raison qui va pousser Paul Kagame à liquider Peter Erlinder. Il sait très bien que Barack Obama ne va rien concéder face à un terroriste qu’il connaît trop bien, il sait aussi qu’en relâchant Peter Erlinder, celui-ci sera encore plus virulent.

Entretemps le boucher de Kigali a décidé de faire la chasse à l’homme contre ses opposants réels ou supposés, et certains pays complaisants sont prêts à lui emboîter le pas. La France a montré, pour des intérêts obscurs, son implication dans ce harcèlement, avec l’arrestation du Dr Eugène Rwamucyo. Espérons que l’opinion internationale verra de plus en plus clair et que le régime de Kagame pourra être qualifié pour ce qu’il est: un régime terroriste.

Eugène Shimamungu

www.editions-sources-du-nil.fr

US Dept of States calls upon Kagame govt to free P.Erlinder

The family and friends of Prof Peter Erlinder a US Attorney gathered in Washington DC to press the US government to put pressure on Kigali government to unconditionally release Prof Peter Erlinder

more about “US Dept of States calls upon Kagame g…“, posted with vodpod

Wife, friends say Erlinder’s career defined by unpopular causes

St. Paul, Minn. — St. Paul attorney Peter Erlinder has often raised eyebrows in the Twin Cities for the long-shot clients and unpopular causes he represents, but his friends and family say his controversial work in Rwanda has been the crusade of his career.

The constitutional law professor is now in his sixth day of detention in a Rwandan prison cell. Erlinder’s attorney say police in the capital city of Kigali have accused Erlinder of denying the country’s infamous 1994 genocide and say he is a national security threat.

Erlinder’s wife, Masako Usui, said she hasn’t spoken to her husband since he was jailed Friday. The only official word she’s received came Tuesday from a U.S. Embassy official who paid Erlinder a visit at the Kicukiro Prison.

“He said to me, through embassy people, ‘He’s OK, don’t worry too much,” Usui said. “That’s the main message. And, ‘Give me sleeping pills.’”

Those sleeping pills are prescribed medication Erlinder requested after complaining of problems falling asleep in his cell. Usui had them FedExed, along with some additional medication for his high blood pressure and cholesterol.

American attorney Kurt Kerns, who visited Erlinder in prison, said Rwandan officials want to charge Erlinder with threatening national security, denying the genocide, and spreading “genocidal ideology.”

A State Department spokesman told MPR News that a consular official visited Erlinder to confirm his welfare, but the department has not called for his release.

Erlinder, who teaches at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, knew the risk when he left for Rwanda last month. He’s defending a presidential candidate from charges of spreading illegal views on the country’s genocide. Erlinder wrote letters to Minnesota’s members of Congress urging them to contact the State Department to ensure his safe passage.

Erlinder believed he was one of seven people targeted for assassination by Rwandan president Paul Kagame. When the alleged hit list was leaked publicly in February, Erlinder told friends that he considered it a human-rights award from Kagame.

The Rwandan genocide resulted in the deaths of about 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus. But over the past seven years, Erlinder has argued that’s not the whole story.

In a 2005 interview, Erlinder told MPR News he believed President Kagame, who is commonly viewed as a hero who ended the massacre, was in part responsible for starting it. He said Kagame’s position of power allowed him to control the genocide narrative.

“If we have victor’s justice, we also have to have a revision of history to make that possible,” Erlinder said. “And unfortunately, with most history, it’s the victors that tell the story.”

Erlinder has consistently said he believes the massacres were not part of a plot to wipe out Tutsi civilians — but were rather the final, three-month chapter following a civil war that lasted years. Erlinder is president of an association of defense lawyers for an international tribunal that is trying the alleged masterminds of the genocide. One of his clients was a Rwandan war commander accused of perpetrating it.

The gray-haired professor has always championed unsavory characters. And while some have ridden him off as a bleeding-heart activist, his supporters describe him as an unrelenting truth-seeker.

When he met his future wife in Tokyo in 1995, he was up front about the niche he carved out for himself.

“He told me the first time, ‘I’m a people’s lawyer.’ What does a ‘people’s lawyer’ mean?” Masako Usui said.

Usui said she learned Erlinder saw himself as an attorney who loved to represent the individuals everyone else walked away from.

“Maybe somewhere, sometime, people like Peter must be needed in this society because society can be so unfair,” she said.

According to his academic resume posted online, Erlinder grew up on the South Side of Chicago and was the first in his family to go to college. Before then, he fixed up garbage trucks, sold water coolers door-to-door, and managed his family’s hydraulics repair shop, according to the resume.

While Rwandan officials are accusing Erlinder of not having a license to practice law in that country, the same claim has been made in Minnesota.

Federal Judge John Tunheim says the courts have denied Erlinder’s repeated requests to represent clients. Although Erlinder has a license to practice in Illinois, he never took the Minnesota bar exam or formally applied for his in-state credentials, Tunheim said.

“He’s represented significant defendants in other parts of the country, but he certainly does not have much experience in our court because he’s never qualified to practice here,” Tunheim said.

Still, Erlinder has assisted in some high-profile Minnesota cases, including those of suspected terrorists, and his criticisms of the U.S. government are well documented.

His colleague, Gena Berglund, a human-rights attorney who met Erlinder while attending William Mitchell, acknowledges that his views do skew left.

“On the other hand, an overarching framework for his ideology is that he believes in human freedoms, and where he sees human freedoms being violated, he’s willing to step in,” Berglund said. “And if that involves criticizing a government or two, he’ll do it. He doesn’t back down.”

That tenacity might be needed to get Erlinder through his latest, and toughest, legal battle.

source : minnesota publicradio

ICTR DEFENCE COUNSEL CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF AMERICAN LAWYER

Arusha, May 31, 2010 (FH) – Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, French defence Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Monday expressed his support for the efforts being made by lawyers to secure immediate release of American Professor Peter Erlinder, now in custody in Rwanda for accusations related to negation of 1994 genocide.

The American lawyer arrested last Friday had been in Kigali for a week to be part of the opposition leader Victoire Ingabire’s defence team. The lady, who is an opponent to Paul Kagame’s regime, is charged for negation of genocide, collaboration to a terrorist organization and spreading ethnic division.

‘’We support solidarity of all lawyers who are working for the release of Peter Erlinder,” the French lawyer told the Chamber at the beginning of the session in the defence case of Callixte Nzabonimana, former Rwandan Youth Minister in 1994, now facing charges of genocide at the UN Tribunal. Courcelle-Labrousse is the accused lead defence counsel.

He alleged that the Professor was arrested for a lecture he made in a conference in Brussels recently and for his publications on genocide and not for what he did in Rwanda of late. ‘’He did not utter any words in Rwanda which amounts to the charges leveled against him” he told the Chamber presided by Ugandan Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa.

The counsel also said that he was himself detained in Rwanda in 2008 together with his investigator for 12 hours. ‘’Our investigator had to flee Rwanda even if the trial was not yet over. We have an impression that our team is being monitored or tailed in Rwanda,” he lamented.

Responding to Mr. Courcelle-Labrousse, ICTR Senior Trial Attorney Kenyan Paul Ng’arua  blamed the defence team for using the event to narrate their own story.

‘’Counsel for Nzabonimana had not yet filed any notice that he had been harassed by Rwandan authorities,” he said adding ‘’It is a crime in Rwanda to deny genocide just as is the case in Germany for any one who denies holocaust. Who ever does that will be arrested regardless of being a lawyer, a doctor or anybody.”

Shortly before the hearing commenced Presiding Judge Bossa said ‘’We note submission provided by both parties on the arrest.” She also asked the defence to immediately inform the Chamber in case they face any problem in the course of their trial.

The Chamber then continued with the hearing of cross examination of a defence witness and former Rwandan mayor, Jean Marie Vianney Mporanzi.

Professor Erlinder is President of the ICTR Defence lawyers association in Arusha and defence counsel for former Rwandan major Aloys Ntabakuze, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment by ICTR and is now waiting for his appeal hearing.

NI/ER/GF

© Hirondelle News Agency