* UPDATE! Genocidaires' defenders accuse Kagame (ICTR lawyers from Canada & USA). AngolaPress, Feb 1, 2007

To Orwell Today,

Dear Jackie,

It's good to hear from you again [May 2006]. Thanks very much for sending the CANADA ANTI-KAGAME PETITION.

In response I would re-iterate part of what I stated in my re-action to Peter Erlinder: RWANDA REP DEFENDS KAGAME.

Although Peter Erlinder is left with nobody standing by him except a few detainees and prisoners (by their recent letter to ICTR President) he has only lost the ground he was looking for. He remains in the leadership of a genocide propagandists group called ADAD in the ICTR within the ICTR.

Following is an announcement that Peter Erlinder this weekend got elected President of the New Board for the ICTR's Defence Attorneys Association. This group, called ADAD, is the actual mouthpiece of genocide negationists, revisionists and propagandists. The people elected to head it have proved to be the hardcore in their mission to uphold genocide ideologies and terrorism. This is manifested by their consistent attempts to turn the truth upside-down as in Peter Erlinder's letter to the Canadian Prime Minister. In return the group has rewarded him by making him group President.

-Alloys Mutabingwa
Government of Rwanda Representative to the ICTR
Arusha, Tanzania

Arusha, May, 29th 2006 (FH) – This weekend, members of the Association of Defence Attorneys (ADAD) at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) elected a new board. On Monday it was announced that Peter Erlinder, an American lawyer, was voted president of the board.

ADAD’s vice-president will be Otachi Bw’Omwana (Kenya). The secretary-general will be Mathias Sahinkuye (Rwanda) with Joseph Mushyandi (Rwanda) as his deputy. Nathalie Leblanc (Canada) will be the association’s treasurer; Christopher Black (Canada) will be media counsellor and John Philpot (Canada) will serve as administration advisor.

Of the one hundred or so attorneys currently working at the ICTR, approximately thirty participated in the election. The ICTR is the only international court which officially has no representative defence body. The only association – set up by a few of its lawyers – is ADAD. With a membership, according to its directors, of about sixty lawyers, until it has been lead by Hamuli Rety, a Franco-Congolese lawyer, who presented an oral report after two years at the head of the board.

Peter Erlinder is the lawyer for Aloys Ntabakuze, the former major in command of the elite para-commando unit, in the trial known as “Military I”. In early April, Erlinder - a law professor and former president of the American Bar – sent a warning in an open letter to the Canadian government before a visit by the Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Erlinder said that Kagame was the person most responsible for the 1994 genocide, in which some 800,000 people died according to the UN.

Hirondelle Foundation
Lausanne, Switzerland

Greetings Alloys,

How typical that the genocidaire's disgraced lawyer is now president of the ADAD of the ICTR. A person needs a degree in Orwellian Newspeak to make sense of all these acronyms.

I agree that your response to Peter Erlinder will work equally well on these latest anti-Kagame, anti-Rwanda petitioners to Canada's government.

Yesterday, at a Press Conference in Washington, DC, President Kagame said the ICTR has spent 1.5-billion US dollars on less than 40 cases and some of its genocide investigators are actually guilty of genocide themselves.

ICTR "is not properly handling" job ("It was created to try cases of genocide"). Voice of America, May 31, 2006

Keep up the good work defending Rwanda against the genocide negationists, revisionists and propagandists at ICTR.

All the best,
Jackie Jura

* Genocidaires' defenders accuse Kagame (ICTR lawyers from Canada & USA). AngolaPress, Feb 1, 2007
Arusha, Tanzania - Two defence lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, have petitioned the court to press charges against leaders of the Rwanda`s ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), for their responsibility in the 1994 genocide. America`s Peter Erlinder, and Andre Tremblay of Canada, who are also professors of law in their respective countries, also want the activities of the ICTR suspended and all completed cases revised, in consideration of alleged crimes committed by the ex-rebels now in power. "In light of the new evidence, all those who were accused at the ICTR were blamed for crimes of which the responsibility entirely or partially falls on the RPF leadership," said the two lawyers in a petition sent to the ICTR and to the UN Security Council, a copy of which was availed to PANA Tuesday. Erlinder, who is also chairperson of the ICTR Defence Counsels Association, is on record for views that are markedly hostile to the current Rwandan regime, which he accuses of having instigated the genocide that swept the tiny east African country in 1994. "It is no longer possible for the ICTR to carry on working credibly as long as those mainly responsible for the massacres of civilians in Rwanda in 1994 are not sued," the two said.

The two counsels have also requested the UN Security Council to extend the ICTR`s term, in order to prevent impunity for the "members of the current Rwandan government, including president Paul Kagame." The Security Council had directed the ICTR to complete its trials by 2008. Erlinder and Tremblay, who defend the ex-commander of a para-commando battalion, Aloys Ntabakuze, are further requesting the suspension of any processes meant to transfer to Rwanda anyone who was sentenced or accused at the ICTR. By the provisions of the ICTR, Rwanda may receive people who were sentenced at the Arusha tribunal, but to date, no one has yet been sent to a Rwandan jail to serve their sentences. Meanwhile, the ICTR plans to refer some cases to Rwandan courts to reduce its backlog and help meet its deadline of late 2008.