Can Rwandan President Kagame be held Responsible at the ICTR for the Killing of President Habyarimana?
* Peter Robinson has served as lead counsel for Joseph Nzirorera, former President of the Rwanda National Assembly, at the ICTR since 2002. He has also worked on the defence of General Dragoljub Ojdanic, former Chief of Staff of the Yugoslavian Army, Radislav Krsti
, former Commander of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, and Radovan Karadzi, former President of the Bosnian Serb Republic, at the ICTY. He is the author of a novel, The Tribunal. [peter{at}peterrobinson.com]
** Golriz Ghahraman has practised law as a criminal barrister in Auckland, New Zealand since 2004. She worked as an intern for the defence team of Joseph Nzirorera from June to August 2008. [golriz.ghahraman{at}kellogg.ox.ac.uk]
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Abstract |
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In 2006, a French investigating judge suggested that Rwandan President Paul Kagame be prosecuted at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the 1994 shooting down of the plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana which triggered that country's genocide. This article examines the evidence against President Kagame and the myriad of legal issues involved. Those issues include the applicability of the personal, temporal, and subject matter jurisdiction of the ICTR, the status of President Habyarimana as a combatant and principles of perfidy and proportionality. The authors conclude that while the shooting down of the plane may have been a war crime, the law on the matter is sufficiently unclear and therefore a prosecution of President Kagame would not be prudent.