A war-crimes appeals panel agreed Friday to a one-week stay of its decision to release a leading suspect in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which a half-million or more ethnic Tutsi died.
The panel’s decision early this month to release the suspect, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, outraged the Rwandan government to the point that it said it would stop cooperating with the war crimes tribunal investigating the genocide.
Rwanda then denied a visa to the war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who had planned to make her first visit to Rwanda this week.
Friday’s decision allows seven days for the appeals panel to decide on a request by Del Ponte that it review its decision to release Barayagwiza. She has yet to disclose the legal reasons for challenging the decision except to say that she had new facts. She must file her brief by Thursday.
“We are pleased the appeals court is recognizing the importance of this case and of our ability to make such a request,” said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the prosecutor.
Zephyr Mutanguha, the Rwandan representative to the tribunal, which is based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, called the stay a “welcome development.”
“We feel that this should actually be followed by the case being revisited completely,” he said. “We feel he is not a common criminal. He is a special criminal. We pray that he does not get released.”
On Nov. 5, the appeals court of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda dismissed the case against Barayagwiza, saying his rights had been violated because he was held in jail too long without trial. It ordered him returned to Cameroon, where he was arrested in 1996.
The Rwandan government calls Barayagwiza, 49, a chief architect of the campaign by extremists from the Hutu ethnic group to eliminate the Tutsi minority from Rwanda in 1994.
He was the spokesman for the foreign minister and helped found Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines, a radio station that preached hatred against Tutsis at the time.
Despite being denied a visa to Rwanda, Del Ponte–also the prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia–traveled to Arusha on Tuesday. At the start of what was planned to be a two-week trip, she met with her prosecutors, judges and court registrar, still hoping that the Rwandan government would relent and grant her visa, Risley said.
“It is her assumption that she may cut her trip short in the event that she has to,” he said. “But she remains hopeful that this can be worked out.”
