February 20, 2008

Improperly Resisting Genocide

Even the BBC sounds skeptical:
Rwanda has urged foreign governments and Interpol to ignore Spanish arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan army officers on genocide charges.
...
Spain's high court has accused the officers of involvement in mass killings in the early 1990s.

Spanish courts can prosecute war crimes even if the offences took place abroad.
...
But Rwanda's foreign ministry said the judge had never visited Rwanda or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some of the killings are alleged to have taken place...It adds that he has not tried to liaise with Rwanda's judicial authorities to seek the officers' arrest.
...
During a 100-day period in 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed, mainly ethnic Tutsis at the hands of radical Hutus.

The genocide came to an end when Tutsi-led rebels under Paul Kagame took control.

But the judge said that, after taking power, the army under Mr Kagame carried out mass killings of Hutus in Rwanda and in refugee camps in what was then neighbouring Zaire.
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In 2006, French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued indictments against nine close aides of Mr Kagame, sparking a huge diplomatic row.
So why--this question is not meant as commentary on that war--don't these heroic European jurists indict Russian officials for the destruction in Chechnya?

Because they know full well that such indictments would expose them to a case of Litvinenko's disease.

That's why the investigations of Putin's alleged money laundering won't come to anything, and why things like this will continue.

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