Author: DEUS NGOWI
AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (ICTR) has officially closed the case against one of the Rwandans accused of orchestrating the 1994 Genocide, Augustin Bizimana.
Sitting at Arusha on Wednesday, Judge Lee Muthoga ruled that the prosecution presented sufficient information to establish that Bizimana is deceased and that a judicial order closing his case before the Mechanism is warranted.
“Finding that the prosecution has established that the confidential classification of the motion is unnecessary and that the motion should be reclassified as public; for the foregoing reasons, I decide that the case against Bizimana is now closed and order that the motion be reclassified as public,” decided Judge Muthoga.
The remains of Bizimana, one of the most wanted suspects of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, were found in a grave in Congo Brazzaville. DNA tests confirmed his identity and that he had been dead for 20 years.
He was the defence minister when about 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. Bizimana was indicted in 1998 by a United Nations (UN) tribunal on 13 charges, including genocide, murder, rape and torture.
He was to appear at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) that has since been dissolved along with the Yugoslavian one, paving way for The Mechanism to wind up the remaining businesses as there are still some cases pending and fugitives being sought.
The announcement of his death followed the arrest in Paris in May this year of Félicien Kabuga, who is accused of being the major financier of the killers during the genocide.
They were ethnic Hutu extremists targeting members of the minority Tutsi community and their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin. Operative indictment against Bizimana was confirmed on 13th October 2011 by Judge Khalida Khan of the ICTR.
On 29th April 2013, Judge Vagn Joensen, acting at the capacity of the Single Judge of the Mechanism, vacated the previous ICTR warrant of arrest and order for transfer of Bizimana and issued a new warrant of arrest and order for the transfer of Bizimana under the authority of the Mechanism.
A motion was then filed confidentially by the Mechanism Prosecutor on 26th October 2020, requesting that Bizimana’s proceedings be terminated on account of his death. The Prosecution’s request filed on 3rd November this year reclassify the motion as public while maintaining the confidentiality of the annexes attached to it.
The prosecutors (Mr Serge Brammertz and Ms Thembile Segoete) presented a death certificate issued by the authorities of the Republic of Congo confirming that Bizimana died on 5th August 2000 and the results of field and recent forensic investigations support the death certificate’s accuracy.
Dozens of people were convicted for their role in the killings by the ICTR, set up after the genocide, and hundreds of thousands more faced trial in community courts in Rwanda.
