The president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Appeals Chamber, Theodor Meron, has over the years exerted undue influence on trial judges to let high-profile war crimes suspects go free, a Danish judge has said.
Frederik Harhoff’s criticism, contained in a five-page confidential letter that leaked last week, also alludes to top suspects in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
The letter, whose content has since been published in Danish media, was addressed to 56 people, including several lawyers.
Harhoff, a Danish judge who sits on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) trial panel, said Meron, an American, has been exerting “persistent and intense” pressure on his fellow judges to allow high-profile suspects go free.
Meron, who also presides over the Appeals Chamber of ICTY, earlier this year sparked controversy after a panel he led overturned guilty convictions of two former cabinet ministers in the genocidal regime of Juvenal Habyarimana.
In February 2013, Justin Mugenzi, who headed the trade ministry, and Prosper Mugiraneza, of public services, were controversially acquitted on appeal. An ICTR Trial Chamber had on September 30, 2011, found both men guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide and direct public incitement to commit genocide and sentenced each to 30 years in prison.
Manipulating judges
In the letter, Harhoff scrutinises and criticises a series of judgements acquitting Serbian and Croatian leaders. He said Meron manipulated the acquittal of Croatia’s Gen. Ante Gotovina and Momčilo Perišić, former Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army.
In 2011, Gotovina was sentenced to 24 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity charges. He was accused of seeking the “permanent removal of the ethnic Serb population from the Krajina region” during the war for Croatia’s independence in 1995.
Perišić was found guilty by a majority of the Trial Chamber of aiding and abetting murders, inhumane acts, persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, and attacks on civilians between August 1993 and November 1995 in Sarajevo and Srebrenica.
The Danish judge’s criticism amounts to a severe and dramatic accusation against the tribunal as a whole.
“The most recent of these judgments have occasioned a deep professional and moral dilemma for me, one that I have never before experienced. The worst of it is the suspicion that some of my colleagues have been exposed to short-term political pressure and this completely changes the premises of my work to serve the principles of justice and reason,” Harhoff writes in the letter.
Harhoff has also worked at the Tanzania-based ICTR as a senior legal officer.
Rwanda reacts
Speaking to The New Times at the weekend, Martin Ngoga, the Prosecutor General, said: “Unintentional as it is, what this judge has revealed is extremely shocking and surprising. It gives us a picture of what has been happening in the deliberation rooms of the tribunal. The sad part of it is that the judge is only concerned with the cases in the Balkans and not Rwanda.”
Ngoga added: “We all know that there have been acquittals with regard to Rwandan cases that were equally controversial. The silence about the Rwandan cases is questionable.”
He said the resolution leaves a lot to be desired about the credibility of the court.
“They have to consider the status quo if future cases are to be decided in a credible way and if the tribunal is concerned with its legacy,” the Prosecutor-General said.
Presently operating at a biannual budget of nearly $250 million, the ICTR was established in 1994 to prosecute persons responsible for Genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda or in neighbouring States in 1994.
The court has completed 72 cases with 10 of them being acquittals, while 17 are pending appeals. It is slated to close down in 2014.
So far, six former ministers who served on the interim government, led by Jean Kambanda, have been acquitted, despite a detailed guilty plea entered by Kambanda on the role of his government in the Genocide.
The New Times
