13.04.07 - RWANDA/BRUGUIERE - TWO RWANDAN GENERALS SUE BRUGUIERE IN BELGIUM

Brussels, 13 April 2007 (FH) – Two Rwandan Generals, close to President Paul Kagame and accused by Jean-Louis Brugière of having participated in the attack against the plane of President Habyarimana, sued the French investigating magistrate in Brussels and Belgium, we learn on Friday by his lawyer. An introductory hearing, during which the substance is not to be discussed, will take place before the first Chamber of the Court of first instance of Brussels on 19 April. Generals Charles Kayonga, Chief of the Staff of the Army and Jackson Nkurunziza (known under the name of Jack Nziza), charged with the civic instruction within the Rwandan army, are among the nine figures close to power which are searched for by international warrants of arrest issued following the order of the investigating judge and published on 27 November 2006. This order reasoned that the FPR and of General Paul Kagame were responsible for the attack on the plane of President Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, on the eve of the genocide which caused between 800,000 and 1 million deaths. Charles Kayonga and Jackson Nkurunziza participated in the attack, according to the French Judge. According to Mr. Serge Moureaux, their lawyer, the proceedings, engaged in March, concern the implementation of the warrants issued by the investigating judge by Belgium. “It’s about the right of free movement”, he explained to Hirondelle agency. “Brussels is the seat of several international organizations”, he recalls, and moreover, there is an agreement of military cooperation between Belgium and Rwanda and according to it, these Generals must be allowed to work in the frame of commissions between States. These warrants prevent them to do so”. The Ministers of Interior and Justice will be cited for Belgium. This action also concerns the investigating judge, “personally and as an organ of the French state”. According to Mr. Moureaux, Jean-Louis Bruguière, in writing this order “which considers facts as established although he can only establish presumptions” and “in issuing his order all over the azimuth”, breached two of his obligations as an investigating judge: the presumption of innocence and the secrecy of the investigatory phase. That constitutes a “violation of international conventions, notably the European Convention on Human Rights”. And, “the Belgian law relative to the European warrant of arrest [law of 19th December 2003] prohibits these violations, Serge Moureaux added. Due to that, we demand Belgium not to implement the warrants issued by Judge Bruguière”. According to the lawyer of the Rwandan Militaries, “we are brought to consider that he acted for political reasons and that he turned his functions from their proper object. I add that he publicly sides with the revisionist thesis of the genocide insofar as he charges the responsibility of the genocide to the FPR and to Paul Kagame, contrary to all the case law of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)”. BF/PB/CV © Hirondelle News Agency