APA – Kigali (Rwanda) – This week’s decision by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, Netherlands that Rwanda’s key genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga was unfit for trial has underscored the urgent need for judicial authorities globally to redouble efforts to deliver justice before it is too late, Human Right Watch said in a statement Thursday.
Kabuga is one of the alleged leading architects and financiers of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.
During the hearing late Tuesday, judges said they wanted to “adopt an alternative finding procedure that resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction.”
In a statement, HRW recalls thatr many perpetrators of the genocide, including former high-level government officials and other key figures behind the massacres, have been brought to justice.
The judges proposed an alternative legal procedure that “resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction.”
Kabuga was first indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1997.
He is accused of being a mastermind of the genocide, having acted as chief financier of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which during the genocide instructed people to erect barriers and carry out searches, named persons to be targeted and pointed out areas to attack.
Kabuga is also accused of aiding and abetting the Interahamwe, a militia attached to Rwanda’s then-ruling party, which hunted down and slaughtered ethnic Tutsis.
He is being tried by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals on charges of genocide, incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity.
CU/as/APA