Prosecutors Wind Down Witness-Tampering Case Tied to Rwanda Genocide

(CN) — The prosecution presented evidence before a United Nations tribunal Monday against six people charged with witness tampering in a case dating back to the Rwandan genocide more than 25 years ago.  

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, commonly referred to as the Mechanism, heard final statements from the prosecution at the start of three days of closing arguments in a case against six people charged with bribing and intimidating witnesses. 

“Willful interference of witnesses is punishable by this tribunal,” prosecutor Rashid Rashid told the court, partitioned into plexiglass cubicles to protect against the spread of Covid-19, during a hearing in Tanzania. The Mechanism took over from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the U.N. tribunal created to investigate crimes committed in the landlocked central African country in 1994.  

Six people - Maximilien Turinabo, Anselme Nzabonimpa, Jean de Dieu Ndagijimana, Marie Rose Fatuma, Dick Prudence Munyeshuli and Augustin Ngirabatware - have been charged with contempt of court for allegedly pressuring and paying witnesses to change their story during an appeal of Ngirabatware’s 2014 genocide conviction. All have pleaded not guilty.

The tribunal's chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in a statement when the group was arrested in 2018 by Rwandan authorities that his office is determined "to stand against all efforts to interfere with witnesses and the proper administration of justice."

“We are fully committed to safeguarding the integrity of all proceedings before the Mechanism, [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] and [International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia], in particular by ensuring the protection of witnesses,” Brammertz said. 

Ngirabatware, Rwanda’s former minister of planning, is currently serving a 30-year prison for genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and rape during a three-month period in which some 800,000 people were killed. He was sentenced to 35 years in 2012, but the prison term was reduced after a 2014 appeal.

He wanted the original trial tossed out entirely and it was in the run-up to a hearing over that request that the group allegedly coerced witnesses to change their testimony. 

The group includes Ngirabatware’s former sister-in-law, a defense investigator from the tribunal and several officials who served in the Rwandan government during the genocide. All of the defendants are represented by separate counsel. 

Ultimately, four witnesses from Ngirabatware’s original trial recanted, signing letters saying they had lied on the stand in exchange for reduced sentences of their own or because they had been bribed or intimated. 

However, at a 2018 hearing, two of the witnesses retracted their retractions.

“My statement in 2010 was true and I maintain it...Everything about my retraction was imposed on me,” a witness identified as Anae told the court via their counsel.

Ngirabatware’s request for a retrial was ultimately denied. 

In arguments Monday, Rashid detailed receipts of banking transactions that he said show a pattern of payments to witnesses. These documents were not shown to the press or the public. 

“The core of this testimony is corroborated by electronic communications and by documents found on electronic devices seized from the accused,” the prosecutor said.

Geoff Roberts, the lawyer for one of the accused, Nzabonimpa, took the floor in the afternoon to argue that there was no evidence indicating his client had pressured any witnesses to change their testimony. Nzabonimpa, a former mayor, was a childhood school friend of Ngirabatware. According to the prosecution, he used his position of relative wealth and power to both pressure and bribe witnesses.

“The prosecution certainly loves a good story. But a good story is not enough,” Roberts told the tribunal judges.

Ngirabatware’s father-in-law, Felicien Kabuga, was arrested in Paris last year after two decades on the run. Once Rwanda’s richest man, he is accused of bankrolling the genocide. 

In April 1994, violence broke out in Rwanda following the assassination of the country’s president, Juvenal Habyarimana. In the years leading up to the genocide, Rwanda was immersed in a bloody civil war between the Tutsis and the Hutus. The Mechanism, which also took over remaining cases from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, splits its headquarters between the East African country of Tanzania and The Hague, Netherlands. 

Hearings will continue in Tanzania on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Follow Molly Quell on Twitter.

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