Canadian authorities have rejected Leon Mugesera’s request to delay his deportation until a UN torture committee decides on a claim that he faces persecution back home. He was extradited to Kigali on Monday.

By Josephine Uwineza, The Hague

A Quebec Superior Court judge rejected Mugesera’s bid to stay in Canada on the grounds that his lawyers last week appealed to the UN Committee Against Torture against his extration. The Committee had agreed to look into the case and implored Canada to delay the man’s extradition.

“Mugesera lost his final bid to avoid deportation on Monday when the Federal Court dismissed a motion for a stay of deportation, and by late afternoon, he was put on a plane headed for Rwanda's capital city,” tweeted @Lmushikiwabo – the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs.

"We are prepared to follow the law to the letter and honour the guarantees we gave the Canadian government," said Martin Ngoga, Rwandan chief prosecutor. "Everyone is welcome (to observe)."

Superior Court Justice Michel Delorme’s decision accepted the federal government’s argument that only Canada’s Federal Court has jurisdiction in immigration matters. Delorme went further by saying the UN committee doesn’t have the power to force a state to abide by its findings.

Leon Mugesera is charged with incitement to genocide based on a speech he made in November 1992 in Kabaya, Rwanda at an MRND (Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement) party meeting. He allegedly told 1,000 of his party members that “we the people are obliged to take responsibility ourselves and wipe out this scum [the Tutsi]” and “dump their bodies into the rivers of Rwanda.”

Mugesera fled with his family to Canada in 1993. Even though he testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in several trials, Mugesera’s speech did not provide grounds for universal jurisdiction in Canada, where a far less notorious suspect, Désire Munyaneza, was jailed for life in 2009.

“There is nothing in the evidence to suggest that Mr. Mugesera deliberately […] incited murder, hatred or genocide,” said the Ottawa Federal Court of Appeal in September 2003, reversing two previous deportation orders. The Supreme Court upheld them in 2005.

However, Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Colter said his country would not hand over Mugesera “unless we do receive assurances that a capital punishment will not be executed.”

Not the first

In late 2011, similar rulings took place throughout Europe. In the case the case of Ahorugeze v. Sweden, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Rwandan judicial system has improved over the last few years. Two judges found that a deportation is neither in breach of the Convention’s Article 3, which prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” nor Article 6, stipulating a detailed right to a fair trial – as provided for in the ECHR.

In the same way, Charles Bandora’s appeal against the Norwegian District Court’s order to extradite him in July was rejected by the Supreme Court in Oslo on November 21, 2011.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) just last week handed over the file of former Rwandan pastor Jean Uwinkindi, who is expected to arrive in Rwanda shortly from the tribunal’s Detention Facility in Arusha, Tanzania. The suspect also lost his appeal against the transfer late last year.

The last death penalties in Rwanda took place in 2003. The law was officially abolished in 2007.