Image by Getty Images via @daylifeSOURCE:Blackstarnews
By Peter Erlinder
With respect to the United Nations Report officially released October 1, showing the role of the RPF and other parties in genocide against Hutus in the Congo (1993-2003).
I think that the language used in the report is much less important than the pattern of commission of massive crimes against civilians, killing 6 million or more, and the illegal extraction of resources from the eastern Congo which the report confirms, once again.
The same information was contained in reports commissioned by the Security Council in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2008.
The Spanish indictment also details more than 300,000 deaths prefecture by prefecture committed by the RPF in Rwanda during 1994, and the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, as a means to trigger Burundi-like civilian massacres to de-stabilize Rwanda as part of the RPF war plan, is well-documented in UN documents in the public record at the ICTR, as well.
It is this evidence that caused the ICTR to find Gen. Gratien Kabiligi not guilty of all charges, and to find Col Theoneste Bagosora, Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva and Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze not guilty of "conspiracy and long-term planning to commit genocide," which completely rejects the RPF story of the "Rwandan-genocide" and is why I was arrested as a genocide denier by the Kagame regime.
This does not deny mass violence took place, but the mass violence did not take place as described by the RPF victors in the Rwanda War. Whether the massive RPF crimes in Congo are called "war crimes," "crimes against humanity" or "genocide" the punishment is the same under international law. President Kagame's insistence that the Report's language be changed does not change the fact that ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had the evidence to prosecute him and the RPF in 2003 or earlier, and was prevented from doing so by the U.S. State Department. "
Toning down" the language is far from being able to "bury" the entire report, as the U.S. has been able to do with similar reports and even evidence at UN tribunals, up until now.
Now that the RPF/Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni crimes are being exposed, U.S.-created "impunity" for the last 20-years of these crimes in the Great Lakes Region begins to verge on U.S "complicity." A complete reversal of U.S. policy is necessary, and soon.
Prof. Peter Erlinder is an American lawyer and teaches at Wm. Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN. He also represented Rwanda opposition politician Ms. Victoire Ingabire, who was prevented from running in the sham elections in August and remains under confinement. Erlinder was arrested in May and held for weeks in Rwanda after he went there to represent Ingabire.
I think that the language used in the report is much less important than the pattern of commission of massive crimes against civilians, killing 6 million or more, and the illegal extraction of resources from the eastern Congo which the report confirms, once again.
The same information was contained in reports commissioned by the Security Council in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2008.
The Spanish indictment also details more than 300,000 deaths prefecture by prefecture committed by the RPF in Rwanda during 1994, and the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, as a means to trigger Burundi-like civilian massacres to de-stabilize Rwanda as part of the RPF war plan, is well-documented in UN documents in the public record at the ICTR, as well.
It is this evidence that caused the ICTR to find Gen. Gratien Kabiligi not guilty of all charges, and to find Col Theoneste Bagosora, Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva and Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze not guilty of "conspiracy and long-term planning to commit genocide," which completely rejects the RPF story of the "Rwandan-genocide" and is why I was arrested as a genocide denier by the Kagame regime.
This does not deny mass violence took place, but the mass violence did not take place as described by the RPF victors in the Rwanda War. Whether the massive RPF crimes in Congo are called "war crimes," "crimes against humanity" or "genocide" the punishment is the same under international law. President Kagame's insistence that the Report's language be changed does not change the fact that ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had the evidence to prosecute him and the RPF in 2003 or earlier, and was prevented from doing so by the U.S. State Department. "
Toning down" the language is far from being able to "bury" the entire report, as the U.S. has been able to do with similar reports and even evidence at UN tribunals, up until now.
Now that the RPF/Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni crimes are being exposed, U.S.-created "impunity" for the last 20-years of these crimes in the Great Lakes Region begins to verge on U.S "complicity." A complete reversal of U.S. policy is necessary, and soon.
Prof. Peter Erlinder is an American lawyer and teaches at Wm. Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN. He also represented Rwanda opposition politician Ms. Victoire Ingabire, who was prevented from running in the sham elections in August and remains under confinement. Erlinder was arrested in May and held for weeks in Rwanda after he went there to represent Ingabire.
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