This post is to inform my visitors in Belgium what they likely already know. Colonel Laurent Nubaha died this morning, offically, of alcohol poisoning. Meanwhile, major Belgian newspapers (Le Soir, La Libre) have not covered this story yet.
Colonel Nubaha was the primary defense witness in the trial of Bernard Ntuyahaga. He was the commander of Camp Kigali, where the 13 Belgian UNAMIR soldiers were murdered. Brussels refused to grant a visa for Colonel Nubaha to come and testify and sources told me RPF lobbyists were responsible. The defense was able to secure the visa and brought Colonel Nubaha from the Congo. Now he is dead before delivering testimony? This reminded me in some ways of Juvenal Uwilingiyimana. Therefore, certain Belgian readers (you know who you are), stay alert and please be careful.
19 May, 2007
15 May, 2007
Gadaffi Blames Arabs for Coma Rumours.
South African Press Agency
Afaf Geblawi
15 May 2007
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi joked with journalists and bounded up a flight of stairs to dispel rumours about his health after a report he was in a coma suffering a blood clot to the brain.
The veteran leader appeared before journalists and television cameras late on Monday, taking aim at "Arab intelligence agencies" for spreading the rumours and threatening to sue a news agency that carried the report.
A healthy-looking Gadaffi, one of the world's longest-serving leaders, made sure the press was on hand as he greeted Ghanaian President and African Union head John Kufuor for an official visit.
"Intelligence agencies were paid to invent the reports," Gadaffi said, and when pressed to elaborate, added: "Arab intelligence agencies and their masters."
He said also said he plans to sue "whoever propagated the report", which triggered a swirl of rumours about the maverick leader whose one-time pariah state has now returned to the international fold.
"Whoever shoots at us, we will shoot at him," he declared.
Palestinian news agency Maan apologised for its report and later withdrew it from its website, saying it had come from an unreliable source.
The report had quoted "informed sources" as saying that Gadaffi had suffered a blood clot on the brain and was in a coma after being rushed to hospital on Sunday.
Gadaffi has frequently turned his back on the Arab world, accusing it of failing to support Libya when it was facing international sanctions over the blowing up of an airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988.
Libya's state news agency Jana said the rumours about Gadaffi, who was born in 1942, were the subject of joking during a telephone conversation with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Monday.
"The phone call was an opportunity for the Italian prime minister to joke about a lie created by a traitor media outlet about the brother leader's health," Jana said.
Prodi, on a visit to Prague, said he spoke with Gadaffi for an hour-and-a-half late on Sunday and again on Monday. "He told me that he was well and these things were said from time to time about political leaders," Prodi told a news conference. "I told him that at home in Italy we say that you will enjoy a long life in such circumstances."
Their discussions also touched the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on death row in Libya. They were convicted of infecting hundreds of children with Aids, an issue that has renewed tensions between Tripoli and the West.
Oil-rich Libya has gradually returned to the international fold after Gadaffi's December 2003 announcement that he was abandoning weapons of mass destruction programmes.
The rumours about Gadaffi's health emerged almost exactly a year to the day after Washington announced in May 2006 it was restoring diplomatic ties with Tripoli and removing it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Gadaffi is due to address the United Kingdom's prestigious Oxford University Union by satellite link on Wednesday, in a mark of his newfound acceptability in the West.
He seized power in a bloodless coup in the North African nation in 1969, but he has always shunned the title of president, instead calling himself "guide of the revolution". -- Sapa-AFP
Afaf Geblawi
15 May 2007
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi joked with journalists and bounded up a flight of stairs to dispel rumours about his health after a report he was in a coma suffering a blood clot to the brain.
The veteran leader appeared before journalists and television cameras late on Monday, taking aim at "Arab intelligence agencies" for spreading the rumours and threatening to sue a news agency that carried the report.
A healthy-looking Gadaffi, one of the world's longest-serving leaders, made sure the press was on hand as he greeted Ghanaian President and African Union head John Kufuor for an official visit.
"Intelligence agencies were paid to invent the reports," Gadaffi said, and when pressed to elaborate, added: "Arab intelligence agencies and their masters."
He said also said he plans to sue "whoever propagated the report", which triggered a swirl of rumours about the maverick leader whose one-time pariah state has now returned to the international fold.
"Whoever shoots at us, we will shoot at him," he declared.
Palestinian news agency Maan apologised for its report and later withdrew it from its website, saying it had come from an unreliable source.
The report had quoted "informed sources" as saying that Gadaffi had suffered a blood clot on the brain and was in a coma after being rushed to hospital on Sunday.
Gadaffi has frequently turned his back on the Arab world, accusing it of failing to support Libya when it was facing international sanctions over the blowing up of an airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988.
Libya's state news agency Jana said the rumours about Gadaffi, who was born in 1942, were the subject of joking during a telephone conversation with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Monday.
"The phone call was an opportunity for the Italian prime minister to joke about a lie created by a traitor media outlet about the brother leader's health," Jana said.
Prodi, on a visit to Prague, said he spoke with Gadaffi for an hour-and-a-half late on Sunday and again on Monday. "He told me that he was well and these things were said from time to time about political leaders," Prodi told a news conference. "I told him that at home in Italy we say that you will enjoy a long life in such circumstances."
Their discussions also touched the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on death row in Libya. They were convicted of infecting hundreds of children with Aids, an issue that has renewed tensions between Tripoli and the West.
Oil-rich Libya has gradually returned to the international fold after Gadaffi's December 2003 announcement that he was abandoning weapons of mass destruction programmes.
The rumours about Gadaffi's health emerged almost exactly a year to the day after Washington announced in May 2006 it was restoring diplomatic ties with Tripoli and removing it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Gadaffi is due to address the United Kingdom's prestigious Oxford University Union by satellite link on Wednesday, in a mark of his newfound acceptability in the West.
He seized power in a bloodless coup in the North African nation in 1969, but he has always shunned the title of president, instead calling himself "guide of the revolution". -- Sapa-AFP
13 May, 2007
ICTR Experts Offered Different Definitions of the Interahamwe.
Hirondelle News Agency
8 July 2005
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), set up specifically to try persons suspected to have participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has so far completed cases involving 25 individuals since its establishment 11 years ago.
Twenty-two of them have been convicted and are serving prison terms ranging from six years to life imprisonment while the other three were acquitted.
One aspect of nearly all the trials so far has been the way the prosecution has implicated the Interahamwe militia group as a key element in the massive killing spree which was sparked on April 6, 1994, shortly after the plane carrying the former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down.
The massacres spread all over the country like a bush fire. It has been shown through the judgements rendered so far that the Interahamwe militia, in collaboration with government authorities, were instrumental in killing over a million people, mostly from Tutsi ethnic group and moderate Hutus, in a period of just one hundred days.
Those found guilty by the Rwanda tribunal include the former interim Prime Minister, Jean Kambanda, who pled guilty and is now serving a life term in prison in Mali. Also convicted are two former Interahamwe leaders: Georges Rutaganda, former national Vice President of Interahamwe za MRND (the then ruling party), now imprisoned for life; and the former Interahamwe leader in Gisenyi prefecture, North Western Rwanda, Omar Serushago, who is serving a 15-year jail term after pleading guilty to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
According to the standard French-Kinyarwanda dictionary, compiled by Belgian priest, Irénée Jacob, Interahamwe means “people of about the same age, of the same generation; an object of the same size or same value; people who get on well together.”
As he took the witness stand on April 9, 1999 to defend himself, among other things, Georges Rutaganda told the judges that the word Interahamwe expressed solidarity and that for him the best translation was “people who get on well together.”
He also described how his organization was called the “MRND Interahamwe”, to distinguish it from other groups, which he claimed bore same name.
But in the course of his testimony, Rutaganda alleged that the meaning changed after April 6, 1994 and acquired a negative connotation because of what he called “propaganda by the rebel group, the Rwandese Patriotic Front-RPF (now in power in Kigali).”
Other defence witnesses have followed a similar line. Dr Eugene Shimamungu, an expert who testified in defence of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former minister of Family and Women Affairs on trial with five others from Butare prefecture (South), said the Interahamwe as such no longer existed after April 6, 1994.
“All militia groups, Impuzamugambi, Abakombozi, Interahamwe and Inkuba mishmashed and moved around with RPF infiltrators”, he told the court. “The militia turned into a group of delinquent young men”.
Dr. Shimamungu, described the only Rwandan expert in political communication, speech analyses and translation, agreed with Rutaganda that the word Interahamwe was transformed as a propaganda tool by the RPF to mean “those who kill together.”
This degree of impunity corresponds with Gerard Prunier’s account in his book “The Rwanda Crisis: History of Genocide”, when he described how Interahamwe behaved during the genocide. “They could steal, they could kill with minimum justification, they could rape and they could get drunk for free,’’ said the writer.
On their weapons, Prunier says “they used machetes and nail studded clubs. They entered churches, schools, football stadiums and hospitals to finish off the wounded, hacking women, children and even men to death.”
He explained that the “Interahamwe had the blessing of a form of authority to take revenge on socially powerful people as long as they are on the wrong side of the political fence”.
American historian and human rights activist, Alison Des Forges, says that as early as the “beginning March 1992 the Interahamwe had proved effectiveness in attacking Tutsis and Hutus who supported opposition political parties such as MDR, PSD or PL.”
One of the authors of the book “Leave None to Tell the Story”, she describes how “foreseeing the role against such “enemies” in case of renewed combat, Habyarimana and his supporters stepped up the recruitment and training of the militia secretly.”
Following the training, Dr. Des Forges says in the book that the authorities invited the Interahamwe “to participate fully in official meetings from the national to the local levels…they took the floor to demand ruthless action against Tutsis and those who helped them.”
Jerry Robert Kajuga, former national president of Interahamwe, a Tutsi, detailed the following to a reporter about the functions of his group. “The government authorizes us. We go in behind the army. We watch them and learn….We have to defend our country. The government authorizes us to defend ourselves by taking up clubs, machetes and whatever guns we could find.”
8 July 2005
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), set up specifically to try persons suspected to have participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has so far completed cases involving 25 individuals since its establishment 11 years ago.
Twenty-two of them have been convicted and are serving prison terms ranging from six years to life imprisonment while the other three were acquitted.
One aspect of nearly all the trials so far has been the way the prosecution has implicated the Interahamwe militia group as a key element in the massive killing spree which was sparked on April 6, 1994, shortly after the plane carrying the former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down.
The massacres spread all over the country like a bush fire. It has been shown through the judgements rendered so far that the Interahamwe militia, in collaboration with government authorities, were instrumental in killing over a million people, mostly from Tutsi ethnic group and moderate Hutus, in a period of just one hundred days.
Those found guilty by the Rwanda tribunal include the former interim Prime Minister, Jean Kambanda, who pled guilty and is now serving a life term in prison in Mali. Also convicted are two former Interahamwe leaders: Georges Rutaganda, former national Vice President of Interahamwe za MRND (the then ruling party), now imprisoned for life; and the former Interahamwe leader in Gisenyi prefecture, North Western Rwanda, Omar Serushago, who is serving a 15-year jail term after pleading guilty to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
According to the standard French-Kinyarwanda dictionary, compiled by Belgian priest, Irénée Jacob, Interahamwe means “people of about the same age, of the same generation; an object of the same size or same value; people who get on well together.”
As he took the witness stand on April 9, 1999 to defend himself, among other things, Georges Rutaganda told the judges that the word Interahamwe expressed solidarity and that for him the best translation was “people who get on well together.”
He also described how his organization was called the “MRND Interahamwe”, to distinguish it from other groups, which he claimed bore same name.
But in the course of his testimony, Rutaganda alleged that the meaning changed after April 6, 1994 and acquired a negative connotation because of what he called “propaganda by the rebel group, the Rwandese Patriotic Front-RPF (now in power in Kigali).”
Other defence witnesses have followed a similar line. Dr Eugene Shimamungu, an expert who testified in defence of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former minister of Family and Women Affairs on trial with five others from Butare prefecture (South), said the Interahamwe as such no longer existed after April 6, 1994.
“All militia groups, Impuzamugambi, Abakombozi, Interahamwe and Inkuba mishmashed and moved around with RPF infiltrators”, he told the court. “The militia turned into a group of delinquent young men”.
Dr. Shimamungu, described the only Rwandan expert in political communication, speech analyses and translation, agreed with Rutaganda that the word Interahamwe was transformed as a propaganda tool by the RPF to mean “those who kill together.”
This degree of impunity corresponds with Gerard Prunier’s account in his book “The Rwanda Crisis: History of Genocide”, when he described how Interahamwe behaved during the genocide. “They could steal, they could kill with minimum justification, they could rape and they could get drunk for free,’’ said the writer.
On their weapons, Prunier says “they used machetes and nail studded clubs. They entered churches, schools, football stadiums and hospitals to finish off the wounded, hacking women, children and even men to death.”
He explained that the “Interahamwe had the blessing of a form of authority to take revenge on socially powerful people as long as they are on the wrong side of the political fence”.
American historian and human rights activist, Alison Des Forges, says that as early as the “beginning March 1992 the Interahamwe had proved effectiveness in attacking Tutsis and Hutus who supported opposition political parties such as MDR, PSD or PL.”
One of the authors of the book “Leave None to Tell the Story”, she describes how “foreseeing the role against such “enemies” in case of renewed combat, Habyarimana and his supporters stepped up the recruitment and training of the militia secretly.”
Following the training, Dr. Des Forges says in the book that the authorities invited the Interahamwe “to participate fully in official meetings from the national to the local levels…they took the floor to demand ruthless action against Tutsis and those who helped them.”
Jerry Robert Kajuga, former national president of Interahamwe, a Tutsi, detailed the following to a reporter about the functions of his group. “The government authorizes us. We go in behind the army. We watch them and learn….We have to defend our country. The government authorizes us to defend ourselves by taking up clubs, machetes and whatever guns we could find.”
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