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(NEWZIMBABWE) $5m bounty Rwanda genocide suspect in Zimbabwe

COMMENT - Rwandan genocide suspectwanted in Zimbabwe.

$5m bounty Rwanda genocide suspect in Zimbabwe
24/05/2011 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE is providing sanctuary to a Rwandan mass murderer with a US$5 million bounty over his head wanted over the 1994 genocide, prosecutors for a special United Nations court in Tanzania said this week.

Major Protais Mpiranya was the commander of the presidential guard for the former Rwandan leader Juvenal Habyarimana, whose plane was shot down above Kigali airport on April 6, 1994, -- the trigger for the slaughter that followed.

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans – mainly Tutsis -- were killed in the space of 100 days in revenge killings for the President’s assassination by his Hutu supporters.

The United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on Monday began hearing evidence against a businessman suspected of bankrolling Rwanda's 1994 genocide, who is now believed to be hiding out in Kenya.

Similar hearings aimed at preserving oral evidence will begin in the case of Mpiranya, whom prosecutors say is hiding in Zimbabwe.

Claims that Mpiranya is hiding in Zimbabwe were first made by the Belgian government last year, and they have not yet been officially denied by the Zimbabwean authorities.

The United States government has put a US$5 million bounty on his head. Under its Rewards for Justice programme, the US says the cash prize will be claimed by anyone who can “furnish information leading to the arrest or conviction, in any country, of Mpiranya”.

The US government says Mpiranya uses several aliases including Yahaya Mohamed, Hirwa Protais Alain, Alain Protais Muhire, James Kakule, and Mambo Mapendo Augustin.

A clause of the tribunal's statutes, adopted by the judges in plenary session in May 2009, provided for a special dispensation to allow for the collection of evidence to use in the event of a future trial of the genocide suspects in their absence.
A prosecutor and a defence lawyer will be present during the hearings, but the proceedings do not represent a formal trial.

"This is a new and important procedure that the ICTR is embarking upon," the tribunal's chief prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow said after Monday’s unprecedented court session to hear evidence against Felicien Kabuga, who tops a list of the court's 10 most wanted.

Kabuga is accused of buying tens of thousands of machetes and supplying them to militia who in turn killed ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the three-month killing spree.

"The process is designed to ensure that the evidence against the accused is preserved and that the continued evasion of justice by the fugitives does not, in the event of unavailability of the witnesses, erode the ability of the prosecution to establish the case against the accused when they are eventually arrested and brought to trial."

In coming weeks, similar procedures will be adopted regarding Rwanda's former defence minister, Augustin Bizimana, who is believed to be hiding out in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jallow said that Bizimana, Kabuga and Mpiranya were crucial suspects and that it was vital to avoid losing any proof of their alleged guilt before they were brought to trial.

The ICTR was set up by the UN Security Council late in 1994 to try the key suspects in the genocide that swept across the small central African country.

Labels: GENOCIDE, RWANDA

posted by MrK @ 5:04 PM