Rwanda genocide survivors may boycott U.N. court
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) building with a background of Mount Meru in Arusha is seen in this undated handout picture released on February 27, 2008. REUTERS/ICTR-Handout
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Updated: November 21, 2009 1:01 AM
By Hereward Holland
KIGALI (Reuters) - Survivor groups from Rwanda's 1994 genocide say they may stop sending witnesses to the U.N. tribunal in Tanzania, in protest at the court's recent acquittals of two genocide suspects.
The groups, who provide many of the witnesses for the trials, say they will not cooperate unless the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) reverses its decision to release Hormisdas Nsengimana and Protais Zigiranyirazo.
"The ICTR should sit down and revise their decision ... if there are no other positive decisions taken, the relationship is cut off," Freddy Mutanguha, general secretary of IBUKA, an umbrella group for survivor organizations told Reuters at a protest in Kigali.
The ICTR has convicted 39 of 47 cases heard. It released Nsengimana this week saying it did not have enough evidence to convict the Catholic pastor of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Tanzania-based court also freed Zigiranyirazo citing serious factual and legal errors.
Egide Kayinamura, 21, whose whole family was killed during Rwanda's 100-day massacre in 1994, was one of around 200 protestors who marched to the ICTR branch in Rwanda's capital late on Friday.
"Personally I feel very very sad because of the results. we don't accept the decisions. We feel very sad that they let those people free," Kayinamura told Reuters.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
