The trial of accused Rwandan war criminal Désiré Munyaneza will move next week from Canada, to the scene of the alleged crimes - Rwanda

The defense and prosecution teams, each made up of three lawyers, as well as the judge and support staff, will spend about two months in Rwanda and neighboring Tanzania to hear testimony of witnesses unable to travel to Canada.

The entire bill of the brief relocation, will be picked up by Canadian taxpayers, as it was when the team spent two weeks in France in January. The rough tally for that trip was $522,000, not including salaries.

Mr. Mutangana Jean Bosco, Rwanda Prosecution Department Spokesman confirmed the move.

“The coming of the Court to Rwanda is nothing out of the ordinary but simply indicative of the good working relationship we (government) have with the court that is trying the Rwandan suspected of Genocide”, said Mutangana.

The Crown carried out a similar exercise last year in Rwanda. The suspect Mr. Désiré Munyaneza will not be part of the trip like it was in the previous visit.

Defense lawyer Richard Perras, expects to call 14 witnesses to complement the testimony already heard in Quebec Superior Court in Montreal.

The trial, which entered its second year last week, is a first in Canada. The 41-year-old failed refugee claimant was arrested in Toronto in 2005 and charged under Canada’s 8-year-old Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

Munyaneza was a known political extremist even before April 1994. He formed close working relationships with top military officers and local government officials in charge of the Genocide in Butare (now part of the Southern Province).

It is alleged that Mr. Munyaneza distinguished himself, by virtue of his energy and dedication to the policy of massacres, and the efficiency of his operations.

It is also alleged that one of Munyaneza’s responsibilities was the surveillance of a network of roadblocks established throughout the town of Butare, manned by militiamen wielding machetes, axes, nail-studded clubs and other instruments. Tutsi were either killed on the spot, or taken away and assassinated elsewhere

The survivors of the carnage allege that the former top businessman, who was running the main general store when the massacres started, played a very significant role in rape and sexual violence.

Some witnesses that have testified at the trial in Canada, have narrated gruesome cases of rape by Mr. Munyaneza himself, as well as encouraging militias under his command to do the same.

Mr. Munyaneza is also blamed by witnesses and survivors for abducting, together with soldiers, Tutsi from the University Hospital in Butare.

If found guilty, according to the Canadian war crimes law, he would receive a life sentence, which he’d serve here.

Munyaneza, who has been kept in isolation at the Rivières des Prairies detention center since being beaten last year by a fellow inmate, will not travel with his defence team to Rwanda. No date has been set for the trial to resume in Montreal.

Five of war-torn Rwanda’s most wanted are believed to be hiding in Canada. Extradition requests have been sent to Canada for suspects alleged to be connected to the country’s 1994 genocide, in which up to a million Rwandans were killed.

Leon Mugesera www.terroritory.com/category/regimes/most-wanted-north-america/

Evariste Bicamumpa www.terroritory.com/2008/02/07/wantedevariste-bicamumpaka/

Gaspard Ruhumuliza

Vincent Ndamage

Pierre Celestin Halindintwali