{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Gen Karenzi: The unanswered questions

http://www.independent.co.ug/rwanda-ed/rwanda/10413-gen-karenzi-the-unanswered-questions-

Gen Karenzi: The unanswered questions

Lt. Gen. Karenzi KarakeThe big story in Rwanda is, and for a while is likely to remain, the recent arrest of the country's spymaster Lt. Gen. Karenzi Karake at Heathrow Airport in London.  The arrest, carried out on a 2008 warrant against Karenzi and 39 other officers of the Rwanda Defence Forces by a Spanish Judge, has led commentators on Rwandan politics to raise some pertinent questions: Why didn't Kigali appeal and have the indictments quashed? What does the prosecution, conviction or acquittal of Gen. Karenzi mean for Rwanda as sovereign state? What next as relations between Kigali and London enter a frosty tunnel? And above all, were there unread signs in the events leading to the arrest that Kigali did not pay attention to?

Legal experts say if Gen Karenzi is extradited to Spain for trial and he is convicted, he is likely to receive a heavy prison sentence depending on the exact nature of the crimes he will be prosecuted for. Spain does not have the death penalty. At this stage, it is not known if he will be extradited to Spain.

Spanish judge Fernando Andreu Merelles' indictment alleges genocide, crimes against humanity, and terrorism allegedly committed in the 1990s and early 2000. However, charges of genocide were dropped but those related to the murder of nine Spaniards who were working with refugees in Rwanda and DRC between 1994 and 2000 remained live.

But whatever happens in the Karenzi trail, analysts say that his arrest is a strong reminder that a number of other Rwandan officials are still being sought and this is a must win case for Kigali.

A senior don at University of Rwanda says if this is the case, Rwanda has two fronts in the war to vigorously fight; assemble a formidable legal team to poke holes in the evidence contained in the evidence file and play high level diplomacy to avoid clashes with the UK.

Already, Kigali has contracted the services of Booth Blair, the wife to ex British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to lead the defence team. However, it is too early to predict an acquittal or conviction because it will all depend on the quality of the evidence brought against him. It is understood that the evidence file remains confidential at this stage—making it hard to evaluate the strength of the case. In any case, there are still several stages to go through first.

Thwarted past arrests

Highly placed sources say that in the recent years, Kigali has thwarted moves by a western power and South Africa to arrest another senior military official indicted by the same Spanish judge.

In Pretoria, matters were quickly negotiated since relations between the two countries were at their best then; while in another incident in a European country, the officer rushed home after a tip off from friendly people.

For Karenzi's case, President Kagame said that his government learned of the arrest a bit late but Rwandan dissidents abroad had been sharing the information online since June 17. The arrest became public on June 20.

The fact that the British kept the arrest a secret has not gone down well with Kigali and officials say this renders credence to the argument that this could not simply be a judicial affair.

Sources say that when Kigali's enemies and pressure groups learnt of Gen. Karenzi's travel to UK, they pushed Spain to make a fresh request for his arrest which the UK police implemented.

For instance journalists like Judi Rever of Foreign Policy Journal, known to author anti-Rwanda propaganda, wrote in the western media calling for the General's arrest.

It is understood that when Karenzi travelled to London, he was to attend a conference and hold a meeting with senior officials of MI6, an equivalent of the National Intelligence and Security Services that he heads. But the meeting with the officials was called off at the last minute; this and how the details of his itinerary became known to Kigali's enemies remain unclear. But it is understood that there could be a relationship between the cancellation of the meeting and the subsequent arrest which Rwandan intelligence may have not detected in time.

There is a general feeling in Kigali that these judicial processes smack of moves to destabilise the state in Rwanda as it limits its officials from freely discharging their duties since their movements are restricted.

Why then has Rwanda not exhaustively appealed against these indictments?  The Independent could not secure a comment from the Ministry of Justice as minister Johnston Busingye's cell phone was switched off. But the Dr. Bizimana Jean Baptist of the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide, said that Rwanda appealed these indictments immediately they were issued.

"An appeal was lodged in Spain during the tenure of Tharcise Karugarama at the Ministry of Justice. Also Spain introduced a law that removed powers from its courts to try foreigners on the basis of universal jurisdiction. And, that judge had indicted former Chinese leaders but because China is a strong country the indictments have not been enforced," he said.

His view reinforces the general feeling in Africa that western powers are selective when enforcing certain judicial processes—an accusation that has also been thrown against the International Criminal Court (ICC).

But the UK has described the arrest as purely a matter of judicial institutions that has nothing to do with the executive and highlighted the good relations between Kigali and London.

Indeed, observers say, this relationship is strong; Kigali has not recalled its envoy from UK as it did with Berlin and Paris when Lt. Col Rose Kabuye, the former head of protocol to President Kagame was arrested in German over indictments issued by a French judge Louis Brugiere.

A senior lawyer in Kigali however, disagrees that the arrest was purely a court issue.  "This warrant had all along been there; may be scores are being settled. Much as warrants of arrest are issued by judges they are executed by the executive, which is how (Sudan president) Bashir managed to leave S. Africa (against a court order). London cannot just say it acted on a European warrant of arrest because there was no judge at the airport," said Alfred Bandora, a senior private attorney.

Kigali says the British police acted on an invalid warrant of arrest because it was quashed by a superior court in Spain and has been criticised by Interpol and the USA.

But legal minds both in government and in private practice poured water on this argument, saying the British judicial system cannot fail to know a warrant of arrest is invalid and that if this was the case, the ruling of the superior court could have been widely circulated with Kigali as an interested party taking the lead.

"But you will also understand the judicial system in the west is detached from the executive. Look at the bail they have easily granted. Under our criminal law procedures we do not grant bail in cases where a sentence is likely to attract five years of imprisonment and above," a senior private attorney previously working for government said.

History of universal jurisdiction

The doctrine of universal jurisdiction, a part of international law, contends that crimes of genocide and torture are so serious that people accused of committing them can be tried anywhere, even in countries where the crimes did not take place.

The history of controversies caused by universal jurisdiction in Spain dates to 1998 when Madrid issued an international arrest warrant for ex Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on charges of genocide, terrorism and torture. Pinochet was put under house arrest in London but was never extradited to Spain. He died in Chile in 2006.

In 2002, Israeli Air force plane dropped a one-tone bomb in Gaza City's al-Daraj neighbourhood, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. The aim was to kill Hamas former military leader in the Gaza Strip, Salah Shehadeh. He was killed with 14 civilians, most of them minors. Another 150 people were injured and the houses in the vicinity were either damaged or destroyed.   Six years later Judge Fernando Andre Merelles opened a criminal investigation into the matter on the basis of universal jurisdiction against seven Israeli leaders alleged to have committed war crimes.

First forward, in 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed a commission of inquiry into the events surrounding the killing of Shehadeh. The structure, nature and mandate of the commission were to be determined by the state - the very body that was to be investigated.

Back in Madrid in 2009, the office of the national prosecutor (now pursuing a chunk of RDF officers) submitted a request for the court to decline competence over the case since pararell proceedings were going on in Israel. This request was turned down by the court and the ruling was immediately appealed, the case is still pending.

In 2013, still on the basis of universal jurisdiction, judges in Spain ordered warrants of arrest to be issued against five Chinese leaders, including former President and Party Secretary Jiang Zemin, for their policies in Tibet. This followed the news of Hu Jintao's indictment for genocide in Tibet.

China is a supper power in every sense of the word whose investments and markets the economically troubled west is clamouring for. No western power would wish to be in the bad books of the Chinese in the name of enforcing universal jurisdiction doctrine. And, Israel is heavily protected by the US and EU.  Faced with this dilemma, in 2014, the authorities in Spain moved to curtail powers of its judiciary to try cases of crimes against humanity no matter where they were committed. Some legal experts say, among the immediate effects of this legal reform would have been the quashing of the cases involving the Chinese, Israelis – and Rwandese like Karake.

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Gen Karenzi: The unanswered questions

http://www.independent.co.ug/rwanda-ed/rwanda/10413-gen-karenzi-the-unanswered-questions-

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