First Rwandan attorney takes the floor at the ICTR
By Hirondelle News Agency
The first ever Rwandan trial attorney took the floor Tuesday at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in a trial of a senior army
officer presumed to have taken part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Didace Nyirinkwaya, an assistant trial attorney with the Office of the
Prosecutor, is among the few Rwandan lawyers who were recruited in the last year
and a half, 10 years after the creation of the ICTR.
He was intervening in the trial of Colonel Aloys Simba, a retired army officer
said to have been close to former president Juvenal Habyarimana.
Simba is accused of organising the hunt and massacres of Tutsis in the southern
provinces of Butare and Gikongoro.
A Rwandan government estimate put the number of dead in both provinces at over
300,000, about 30% of the total number of dead in the whole country.
The trial is at the defence stage where Simba has called five witnesses in his
defence.
Witness "SNB3", so-called to conceal his identity, testified Tuesday that Simba
did not kill Tutsis because his wife was also one of them. He added that other
Tutsis had also sought refuge in Simba's house.
"Had he killed Tutsis he would have started with those under his roof", said
SNB3.
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