The Observer

Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: Opinion

The ICTR still has not effected the transfer of convicts to their home country, as originally agreed, keeping their convicts in Tanzania instead. [Click to enlarge]

For those who read my column, you are aware that I rarely express agreement with anything any political body does. My standard modus operandi consists of me writing about the way things ought to be and then expressing my disgust and frustration at the fact that they aren't that way. Detectives who investigate serial murders will tell you that the killer very rarely, if ever, strays from his/her MO. While I am no serial killer, I operate in much the same way. The international community has once again acted in a way so as to aggravate me, and I must express that aggravation.

The United Nations genocide court in Tanzania has gone back on its word to return Rwandan genocide convicts to their home country to serve the remainder of their sentences. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) signed an agreement to transfer these convicts to Rwandan prisons. The prisons were deemed sufficient for Sierra Leone's convicts, and as such, Rwandan officials see no reason not to transfer the ICTR convicts to those prisons. The ICTR further refuses to provide any reason that they have not decided to transfer the convicts currently being kept in Arusha, Tanzania, to prisons in Rwanda's Mpanga prison.

Like Rwanda's justice minister, I am perturbed by the court's reneging on its promise. Justice can only be properly served if these convicts are returned to their home country. It gives, first and foremost, the population of the country a sense of closure. The crimes were committed within the borders of Rwanda, and the victims, therefore, can only have closure if the punishment is served within the territory where the crime was committed, very similar to how murder or theft victims receive closure when the criminal is punished locally. Furthermore, the prisons in Rwanda have been deemed by the international community as better suited to house these criminals than the prisons in Arusha.

While the court has not given its own specific reasons, I can still speculate about them, and say that any potential reason is nonsense. The ICTR could potentially say that transfer of the convicts will inspire violence in the country because it will reinvigorate emotions from the tragedy. However, the transfer of the Sierra Leone convicts disproves this fear. There was no violence then, and there will not be now. The prisons are sufficient and secure enough to hold these convicts.

There truly is no reason the ICTR convicts ought not to be transferred to Rwanda, and it is a grave travesty against international justice to stop this transfer from occurring.

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