On May 12, 2005, the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) discreetly handed down two decisions that illustrate an important difference between the UN tribunal in Arusha and The Hague-based tribunal that is responsible for trying cases of crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. At the beginning of December 2004 the first motions for early release from persons convicted by the ICTR were brought before Judge Erik Mose. The two motions were filed by men who had pleaded guilty and cooperated with the prosecutor's office on an ongoing basis as informants or witnesses. Both motions were denied.
The first of these two convicts was Omar Serushago, former militia leader during the 1994 genocide. He confessed to having directly murdered four people and ordered the death of thirty-three others. However, he also helped the prosecution arrest some of the accused and has testified against several of them. Serushago was convicted for genocide, sentenced to fifteen years in prison and has been incarcerated since June 1998. Thus he had not served even half of his sentence when the President of the tribunal ruled on the motion for early release.

The second was Georges Ruggiu, the former Italian-Belgian radio presenter at the notorious Radio des mille collines who was found guilty of incitement to commit genocide and then served as a prosecution witness testifying against his Rwandan friends. Ruggiu, who had been in detention since July 1997, was given 12 years in prison. At the time when the Norwegian judge heard the motions for early release, he had served nearly two thirds of his sentence.

Judge Mose denied the motions succinctly and on strictly identical terms. The judge pointed out that the ICTY convicts who had been granted early release had not been found guilty of genocide, suggesting that this was at least one of the reasons for his denial of the motions by the two ICTR penitent convicts. This purely allusive remark is pertinent. Indeed all the ICTY convicts who petitioned for early release were granted it after having served two thirds of their sentences - with no exception. Furthermore, no judge at the ICTY has ever been opposed to such motions. Thus, if Ruggiu had been convicted at The Hague, he would have stood a chance of early release. Indeed, the only difference is that he was convicted for complicity in genocide.

The Serushago and Ruggiu cases are the only ones before the ICTR where the issue of early release has been raised. However, the ICTR is also hiding another interesting case - that of Elizaphan Ntakirutimana. This former Adventist pastor, age 81, was convicted of genocide and sentenced to ten years in prison. He has already served nine. This reinforces the notion of one UN tribunal applying a merciless system of sentencing in Arusha, while the other UN tribunal in The Hague has informally adopted a principle of early release after serving two-thirds of a sentence.
One man is hoping to reverse this trend - Vincent Rutaganira's lawyer, François Roux. Rutaganira, 61, was a modest former commune advisor who has ten children, is ill and also pleaded guilty. Convicted for a crime against humanity "by omission," Rutaganira got six years. His lawyer is wisely waiting until he has served four years before filing his motion for early release. This will happen in March 2006.

Sentences à la carte

Thus the international criminal tribunals have no set criteria for applying sentences and are operating à la carte. In addition, this is not the only area where it is seemingly better to be convicted in Europe than in Africa. The ICTR has never granted provisional release on remand (even though it is setting a record in terms of the length of pre-trial detention), whereas the ICTY regularly grants pre-trial release. For lack of a host country to take them in, the ICTR has also kept two men who were acquitted at the end of their trial in quasi-detention for almost two years, André Ntagerura and Emmanuel Bagambiki. The ICTR Web site, however, refers to them not as acquitted but as "released detainees."