Le général Karenzi est libre de rentrer

lundi 4 août 2008

La carrière internationale du général major Emmanuel Karenzi Karake devrait prendre fin bientôt puisque les Nations Unies préfèrent que Kigali leur propose un autre candidat pour le poste de commandant adjoint de la force hybride NU-UA (Union africaine) au Darfour.

Les autorités de Kigali avaient d’abord voulu maintenir le général Karenzi mais dans le bras de fer qui l’opposait à New York, Kigali a dû finalement s’incliner.

Les Nations Unies considèrent donc que les accusations de crimes de guerre - formulées depuis plusieurs années par diverses ong et appuyées récemment par des mandats d’arrêts internationaux d’un juge espagnol - qui visent le général Karenzi sont suffisamment sérieuses pour que son contrat ne soit pas prolongé mais elles ne franchissent pas encore le pas des poursuites judiciaires en le faisant arrêter et déférer à la Cour pénale internationale (CPI à La Haye) ou au Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda (TPIR, à Arusha).

Le général Karenzi devrait donc rentrer prochainement au Rwanda. Qu’en sera-t-il des autres qui figurent sur les 48 autres mandats d’arrêts internationaux lancés contre des personnalités militaires du régime rwandais ?

Le général de brigade Kayumba Nyamwasa (Faustin ?) est ambassadeur du Rwanda en Inde. Ce pays qui est une puissance économique en devenir et qui est appelé à jouer un rôle plus important sur la scène internationale, ne peut pas ignorer les questions de la justice internationale. N’oublions pas que l’Inde est le pays qui a déporté vers le Rwanda le vice-président du MDR, Froduald Karamira. Celui-ci a été l’une des personnes exécutées pour génocide le 22 avril 1998.

Aux USA, John Rubagumya Gacinya, le précédant attaché militaire de l’ambassade du Rwanda à Washington, n’a pas été poursuivi par rapport au mandat d’arrêt international le concernant. Il a été tout simplement rappelé et un autre officier supérieur a pris sa place.

Au mois de juin, une visite officielle menée par le ministre des affaires étrangères rwandais a été purement et simplement annulée parce qu’il n’y avait pas de garantie que le colonel Joseph Nzabamwita qui faisait partie de la délégation n’aurait pas été inquiété par la justice belge qui aurait appliqué le mandat d’arrêt international contre lui.

Le mot d’ordre est donc "restez ou rentrez chez vous".

 NKB

http://www.washingt onpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/ article/2008/ 09/20/AR20080920 01
801_pf.html

U.S. Backed U.N. General Despite Evidence of Abuses
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 21, 2008; A23

UNITED NATIONS -- The Bush administration' s support for the appointment of
a Rwandan general to a top U.N. peacekeeping job in Sudan last year came
despite a warning from the State Department human rights bureau that there
was "credible evidence" linking the officer to human rights abuses in
Rwanda in the 1990s, according to internal U.S. government documents.

The U.S. decision to back Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Karake Karenzi as the deputy
force commander of the joint U.N.-African Union mission in the Darfur
region of Sudan may have violated a provision of a 1997 U.S. law known as
the Leahy Amendment, according to two State Department bureaus that opposed
Karenzi's appointment. The law requires the State Department to vet the
human rights records of foreign military units receiving U.S. assistance.

Karenzi's nomination last year opened a deep rift within the administration
between officials who argued that a tainted record on human rights should
disqualify him and those who feared offending the Rwandan government, which
has threatened to pull its forces from peacekeeping operations in Darfur.

But the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi E.
Frazer, short-circuited the debate, assuring African Union officials in a
Sept. 7, 2007, meeting that a U.S. inquiry had found no evidence of
Karenzi's role in atrocities and proposing that he receive the job,
according to a U.S. cable describing the meeting. Four days later, the
United Nations approved Karenzi for the post.

In February, a Spanish judge charged Karenzi and 39 other Rwandan officials
with the mass killings of Rwandan civilians and of several Spanish and
Canadian missionaries and relief workers. Nevertheless, the United States,
Britain and Rwanda have urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to renew
Karenzi's contract when it expires next month, according to U.S. and U.N.
officials.

The initial dispute within the State Department centered on whether Karenzi
was responsible for the killings of hundreds of civilian ethnic Hutus by
his troops during a counterinsurgency campaign in Rwanda in March and April
of 1998. The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have since linked
Karenzi's troops to rights abuses in eastern Congo between 1994 and 2000.

A 1998 State Department report said that Rwandan troops in armored vehicles
opened fire on civilians trying to escape a battle with armed opposition
fighters. The report also found that Rwandan forces engaged in an
unspecified number of reprisal killings and killed 334 people in the
Ruhondo and Cyere communes in Ruhengeri province in northwest Rwanda. The
report did not name Karenzi, but the department's Bureau of Intelligence
and Research later established that he commanded Rwanda's 408th Battalion
in Ruhengeri, which allegedly carried out those crimes, according to the
documents.

In light of those findings, the State Department's Bureau of International
Organization Affairs (IO) and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor (DRL) recommended that Karenzi be disqualified for the peacekeeping
post, as detailed in a September 2007 confidential memo written by Kristen
Silverberg, then head of the international organization bureau, to R.
Nicholas Burns, then undersecretary of state for political affairs.

Silverberg wrote that Karenzi's links to troops responsible for the
killings in Ruhengeri amounted to "credible evidence" of human rights
violations "in the context of the Leahy amendment vetting requirements. "

"Numerous open source allegations of gross human rights violations against
[Karenzi] should disqualify him from a leadership role in UNAMID,"
Silverberg wrote. "While we have no evidence that he ordered the actions
that took place, DRL believes the fact that they occurred under his command
makes it impossible for the department to support his candidacy for policy
reasons and in light of legal considerations.

"IO is aware of the political complications that would ensue from US and/or
UN rejection of [Karenzi] and that he is not among the worst human rights
abusers from Rwanda," Silverberg wrote. "Nevertheless, taking into account
public credibility as well as the potential legal issues, we have doubts
that he is the best candidate."

The Washington Post obtained the State Department documents from an
anonymous source who was critical of U.S. support for Karenzi. Their
authenticity was confirmed by U.S. officials familiar with the internal
debate.

Frazer's spokesman, Russell Brooks, declined to comment on Silverberg's
memo. But he said the State Department complied with its obligations under
the Leahy Amendment. "The general was vetted through a variety of agencies
within the U.S. government, and they concluded that there was no evidence
that he was involved in those allegations, " he said.

The Rwandan government says the charges are baseless, and President Paul
Kagame warned Frazer on July 15 that he would withdraw his troops from
Sudan if Karenzi was forced out. "For me, it's very clear," Kagame said in
an interview this month with the Congolese publication La Conscience. "If
Karenzi goes, the entire Rwandan contingent will leave Darfur -- the same
day."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recently rallied behind Frazer, a
former student of hers at Stanford University, instructing U.N. envoy
Zalmay Khalilzad to urge the U.N. leadership to keep Karenzi in the
peacekeeping post.

Meanwhile, the U.S. deputy ambassador to Rwanda, Cheryl Jane Sim, oversaw
the delivery of more than $20 million worth of peacekeeping equipment --
including military trucks and radio communications kits -- to Rwanda this
month, in a ceremony Karenzi attended.

The case against Karenzi dates to Rwanda's troubled past. In 1994, Rwandan
Hutu extremists linked to the government killed more than 800,000 ethnic
Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Africa's bloodiest genocide. Kagame's
Tutsi-dominated rebel army drove the government from power. The Rwandan
leadership considers Karenzi, who served as military intelligence chief
from 1994 to 1997, a war hero.

But Karenzi's appointment to the peacekeeping post immediately sparked
criticism from rights groups, which link the general to the indiscriminate
killing of hundreds of Congolese civilians in 2000. The deaths occurred
during a battle between Rwandan and Ugandan troops for control of the city
of Kisangani, according to a U.N. inquiry.

A December 2000 U.N. report found that troops on both sides had committed
"systematic violations of international humanitarian law and indiscriminate
attacks against civilians," including killing more than 760 civilians,
wounding 1,700 and driving 65,000 into hiding.

Karenzi told the Associated Press at the time: "I am not proud of this. But
we were fired at."

The State Department questioned human rights advocates and representatives
of the Rwandan and Spanish victims. But the matter was still unresolved
when Frazer traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to press African Union
Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare to speed the deployment of peacekeepers in
Darfur.

During the Sept. 7, 2007, meeting, Frazer assured Konare that the United
States "had done vetting and would like to see the appointment confirmed,"
according to a U.S. government cable describing the meeting.

The United Nations defended its decision to hire Karenzi, saying it had
insufficient evidence to prove that he had committed crimes against
humanity. But the group later reversed course and pressed Rwanda to replace
Karenzi after his indictment by the Spanish magistrate, D. Fernando Andreu
Merelles. The indictment cites several criminal charges against the general
between 1994 and 1997, including the assassination of political opposition
figures and the approval of massacres of ethnic Hutus in the provinces of
Ruhengeri, Gisenyi and Cyangugu.

Rwanda's U.N. ambassador, Joseph Nsengimana, dismissed the U.N. appeal,
responding in a letter to the organization that the allegations are
groundless.

Nsengimana did not respond to requests by e-mail and phone for comment.
Karenzi declined to comment.