The Rwanda Tribunal may lose its credibility unless it indicts and tries Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) officers suspected of having committed war crimes in Rwanda in 1994, Human Rights Watch says in a letter to the tribunal's prosecutor.

Human Rights Watch says that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has brought to justice leading figures behind the 1994 genocide but failed to pursue officers of the RPF, the rebel group that ended the genocide and has since become Rwanda's governing party.

The RPF, led by current president Paul Kagame, is alleged to have killed between 25,000 and 45,000 civilians in the same three-month period.

ICTr chief prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, claims that he has done everything he can to investigate crimes on all sides for the events of 1994.

But Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch says Jallow's prosecution strategy has fallen short:

"The prosecutor's failure to commit to prosecuting senior RPF officers has undermined his credibility and that of the ICTR."

Although the tribunal has investigated RPF crimes for more than 10 years and has gathered witness testimony and physical evidence, Jallow told the UN Security Council in June that he did "not have an indictment that is ready in respect of these allegations at this particular stage."
 

In response to HRW earlier requests, the prosecutor issued a letter suggesting that his office did not have enough evidence to bring prosecutions against Rwandan Patriotic Front officers.

The prosecutor defended his June 2008 decision to transfer an RPF case to Rwanda to be prosecuted there.

Jallow claims that Rwanda's attempt to hold RPF officers to account in last year's domestic trial - known as the Kabgayi case - met international fair trial standards. But the rights organisation says the proceedings amounted to a political whitewash and a miscarriage of justice.