16.02.07 - GENOCIDE/PUBLISHING - AN ICTR DETAINEE PUBLISHES A SCATHING BOOK ....

AN ICTR DETAINEE PUBLISHES A SCATHING BOOK ON THE UN PRESENCE IN RWANDAArusha, February 16, 2007 (FH) - Mr. Edward Karemara, the former Rwandan Minister of the Interior who served during the period of the genocide and who has been detained in Arusha where he is on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), has published a book in France critical of the United Nations’ role in Rwanda in 1994. This is the first time that a detainee of the United Nations currently in trial has written and published a book about his experiences. The press service of the ICTR had no reaction to the news. Under condition of anonymity, a security official, for his part, brought up the possibility of an agreement between the detainee and his lawyer. This could not be confirmed in the absence of Karemera’s defense team, led by Mrs. Dior Diagne Mbaye (Senegal). Detainees of the ICTR in Arusha are considered indigents and the United Nations assures their cost of living and attorney expenses. The work, titled “The Rwandan drama: The Damning Confessions of the UN Forces for the Assistance of Rwanda,” attacks the current Rwandan head of state, Paul Kagame, accusing him of starting the genocide in 1994. The author is equally critical on the head of the UN force in Rwanda during the massacres, the Canadian general Remeo Dallaire, often a witness for the prosecution at the ICTR. “Together with Romeo Dallaire, Paul Kagame gave the order to take down President Habyarimana’s plane knowing that this would set off a cataclysm of such proportion that no person could control or stop it,” writes Karemara in the conclusion of his book published by Editions Sources du Nil (Lille, France), a new, little-known publishing house. “Dallaire knew everything. If he wasn’t the co-author in this criminal enterprise, he was an accomplice who must respond,” maintains the accused. After the bombing, follows the author, Dallaire “created the pretext under which the officers and extremist politicians planned their coup d’etat.” “Gens. Romeon Dallaire and Paul Kagame must one day be held accountable for their crimes,” concludes Karemara. Aside from his duties as Interior Minister in the Rwandan government during the genocide, Karemara was also vice-president of the Presidential party named the National Republic Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND). Accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, the author, trained in law at the University of Louvain (Belgium), is currently on trial with two other national leaders of the MRND, the president Mathieu Ngirumpatse and its secretary-general, Joseph Nziorera. Les Sources du Nil last year published a book signed by another member of the interim government, ex-Minister for Planning, Augustin Ngirabatware, who is being sought by the ICTR. With the title, “The Face of Lies and Injustice,” Ngirabatware casts doubt over the impartiality of the ICTR and the United Nations. Ngirabataware is a son-in-law of the billionaire Felicien Gabuga, the principal financier of the 1994 genocide which caused, according to Kigali, close to a million deaths, almost all of whom were from the Tutsi ethnic group. ER/PB/KD © Hirondelle News Agency