For nearly seven years, the question of whether to send defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to Rwandan courts has been the subject of irresolute initiatives, dead-end announcements and political-judicial maneuvering. On September 7, the ICTR prosecutor finally requested that three defendants be transferred to Kigali. In 2001, the office the prosecutor submitted two requests for transfering defendants to Rwanda - with no result. On June 20, 2003, the UN Security Council issued a resolution that "urged the ICTR to draw up a detailed strategy based on the model of the ICTY completion strategy" in efforts to finish first instance trials by the end of 2008. Tranfers are at the center of this strategy. On June 29, 2004, while sixteen detainees were still awaiting the start of their trials in Arusha, prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow reassured the UN Security Council, "We plan to transfer at least five of them to Rwanda. We remain firmly committed to this aspect of the [completion] strategy. The office of the prosecutor plans to immediately start preparing the files that must be transferred or passed on. We hope to complete this process in mid-2005."

But, once again, the prosecutor's promise became little more than a premature announcement. After Rwanda passed legislation in March 2007 to make the transfers possible, Jallow, on June 18, declared his intention to file requests for three cases to be sent to Kigali. At this point, there were only seven remaining defendants waiting to be tried. The trial of priest Hormisdas Nsengimana started three days after the prosecutor's announcement, placing him out of the running. On July 13, following long negotiations with the prosecutor, the former burgomaster Juvénal Rugambarara confessed, thereby avoiding the possibility that he could have been tried in Kigali (the prosecutor vehemently denies that the transfers are a way of forcing defendants to plead guilty). That leaves former burgomaster Jean-Baptiste Gatete, Colonel Ephrem Setako, Lieutenant Ildephonse Hategekimana, former secretary general of the ministry of the interior Callixte Kalimanzira and two former merchants, Gaspard Kanyarukiga and Yussuf Munyakazi.

Priority for rank

On July 25, Rwanda removed a major obstacle to the transfers by abolishing the death penalty. On September 7, Jallow officially requested that the lower-ranked of the two military men and the two businessmen be transferred to Rwanda. The businessmen, who had been largely unknown until thrust into the spotlight by their detention in Arusha, were obvious choices. After all, the Security Council resolution recommends that trials of defendants "of intermediary or junior rank" be removed from the court. At first glance, Lieutenant Hategekimana, the third proposed transfer, also fits this criteria. However, Hategekimana may have played a primary role in implementing the genocide in the southern prefecture of Butare. Alison Des Forges, historian and expert prosecution witness, writes that Hategekimana directed the massacres in Butare together with Captain Ildephonse Nizeyimana, who is still sought by the ICTR. "Hategekimana and his troops were to kill the Tutsis in Ngoma, Matyazo and other areas surrounding these parts of the village of Ngoma [...] Hategekimana also supplied soldiers for the larger massacres carried out in the south of the prefecture, including that which took place in Karama. According to witnesses, he led the assault on the Ngoma church and against the Benebikira convent," she writes.

In wanting to relieve the tribunal of Lieutenant Hategekimana's case rather than that of Colonel Setako, the prosecutor seems to have taken into account only Hategekimana military rank and not the seriousness of the alleged crimes. That risks aggravating a frequent fault of the ICTR trials, which have often given more more importance to defendants' function rather than their real influence. Nonetheless, the prosecutor warns, "There can still be other requests" for transfers.