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contribution 14 - HASKELL Leslie

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Kabgayi case - RPF prosecution

Leslie HASKELL

original version

Thank you. I just wanted to respond to two points actually raised by Prosecutor Jallow. The first was that he stated on June 4th in front the Security Council he told them that investigative work is still ongoing but that he didn’t have any indictments ready. That simply isn’t true. There have been no investigations ongoing. In fact, there’s been no budget for investigations for at least two years. So I’m quite surprised by that assertion, because it simply isn’t true.

The second one with respect to the case that went forward in Rwanda, Prosecutor Jallow said he had no indication from any of the monitors who were there that there were problems. That too is, in fact, not true. I sat in your office with Roger Des Forges, Ken Roth and others on the 23rd of March 2009 and we actually walked you through what we thought what the problems were. And I won’t go into all of those, but the main problem that we saw was that case was not vigorously pursued.

From the very beginning there was one theory of the case, which was that it was a spontaneous killing. Both the Prosecution and the Defence worked off of that premise, when, in fact, the evidence showed that it was a planned military operation. And we walked you through that, actually. We told you that we thought that there was evidence, which we had helped you to gather, in fact ‑‑ Alison Des Forges had helped on that ‑‑ that there were these 13 clergymen who were moved from a place where they we were under great international scrutiny to a very remote location. The RPF that was guarding them were removed. The military intelligence unit came in, surrounded the seminary. People were brought into a room who were very clearly identified, almost as if they were on a list. And people that were not wanting to ‑‑ that they didn’t want to kill— were either asked to leave or were forcibly removed. And then once they had everyone in the room, they started shooting, and a couple minutes later when a whistle blew, they stopped and that was it.

So we did walk you through, actually, where we saw the problems. In fact, we gave you specific names of people that we thought were involved, that gave orders. We offered to assist you. So I find that statement simply just ingenuous.

On a final point, I would say that in terms of the trial presence, that simply isn’t true either. I was there, and I know who your observers are, and I both know that they weren’t always there and that they have even said that they weren’t always there. So there, too, it simply isn’t true. Thank you.

Andrew CLAPHAM

We’ll give Mr. Jallow a chance to respond in a moment. The last word will come to Roland Amoussouga.