Impunity and Complicity in the Genocide in Rwanda and Congo: African Mercenaries for the American New world order system
http://www.antipasministries.com/other/article181.htm
'Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza, we have the greatest honour to extend our sincere gratitude to you both for your financial and technical support in our struggle that has just ended with the taking of Kigali.
'Rest assured that our plan to continue shall be pursued as we agreed at our last meeting in Kampala. Last week I communicated with our big brother Yoweri Museveni and decided to make some modifications to the plan. Indeed, as you have noted, the taking of Kigali quickly provoked a panic among the Hutus who fled to Goma and Bukavu. We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. All means are being used for their return as rapidly as possible. In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days.
Obama requests immunity for Kagame re Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars
http://sfbayview.com/2011/obama-requests-immunity-for-kagame-re-rwanda-genocide-and-congo-wars/
September 14, 2011
Reporting on the mass protest on Tuesday, Sept. 13, in Paris against Kagame’s visit, Susana Sanz Guardo of Basta de Impunidad en Ruanda (Stop Impunity in Rwanda) wrote that an unprecedented 1,300 people from several European countries marched to the Parliament Building protesting Kagame’s human rights abuses in Rwanda and Congo, calling him “genocidaire (someone who commits or advocates genocide).” “The biggest success has been, without doubt, that for the first time Rwandans and Congolese living in Europe, being victims of the policy of Kigali, have joined together in the same march and with one common voice,” she wrote. “For the first time the protest has been massive. This means that they have lost the fear, that we will not stop and that there is no turning back.”
KPFA Weekend News report broadcast Sept. 10, 2011
On Aug. 29, Barack Obama’s State Department filed “Suggestion of Immunity Submitted by the United States of America,” a request for immunity for Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the civil lawsuit Habyarimana vs. Kagame, which alleges Kagame’s guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars and demands damages for the widows of assassinated Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira.
Obama seems to be requesting more legal immunity for a foreign head of state than he himself enjoys, after the landmark Supreme Court case Clinton v. Jones, which established that a sitting president of the United States has no immunity from civil litigation against him for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.
Plaintiffs' complaint in Habyarimana vs. Kagame promises to prove that then Gen. Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda, ordered the assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994. The crash triggered the ethnic massacres known as the Rwanda Genocide.
Or will the Obama team argue that Kagame is immune from legal action for assassinating the Rwandan and Burundian presidents because that was part of Kagame’s path to seizing power and is therefore related to his office as president of Rwanda?
Plaintiffs’ counsel say they can prove that Kagame ordered the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents by shooting down their plane, which crashed into the presidential palace in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 6, 1994, triggering the panic and subsequent massacres that came to known as the Rwanda Genocide. The two presidents were returning from peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania, called to try to bring an end to the Rwandan civil war of 1990-1994, which began when then Gen. Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Army invaded Rwanda from Uganda on Oct. 2, 1990.
Habyarimana v. Kagame
Habyarimana v. Kagame alleges that Gen. Paul Kagame and nine of his top military commanders and officials are guilty of “wrongful death and murder, crimes against humanity, violation of the rights of life, liberty, and security, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, torture, and continuing conspiracy in furtherance thereof” in Rwanda and its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Plaintiffs allege that many of these crimes, including the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, were committed before Kagame succeeded in overthrowing the government and becoming first a government official and then president.
The suit demands a jury trial, in which evidence would become public record, and might then be included as evidence in a criminal trial.
Peter Erlinder and lawyers Kurt Kerns and John P. Zelbst filed the suit on behalf of Mesdames Habyarimana and Ntaryamira in the federal District Court of Western Oklahoma in Oklahoma City prior to Kagame’s April 30, 2011, commencement address at Oklahoma Christian University.
Kagame failed to answer the complaint within the time allowed, and the court thus declared a default judgment in favor of Mesdames Habyarimana and Ntaryamira.
This judgment could, however, quite likely be overturned if Kagame, Obama and the State Department were willing to let the case proceed on its merits to a jury trial.
Pierre Prosper, a lawyer who served as George Bush’s second United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues from 2001 to 2005, is representing Kagame in his claim that he was not properly served with the lawsuit and that he therefore cannot be expected to answer the lawsuit or be declared in default for failing to answer.
Kagame was not properly served?
It seems unlikely that the State Department would have intervened had they expected Pierre Prosper’s challenge of proper service, by a team of experienced lawyers and private investigators, to succeed.
Claude Gatebuke, with other Rwandans and supporters, protested the April 30, 2010, visit of Kagame to Oklahoma Christian University, where he was served with the lawsuit on behalf of the assassinated presidents’ widows. – Photo: Kendall Brown
But it’s difficult to argue that Kagame was not properly served and remains unfamiliar with the lawsuit, considering that his own prosecutors presented portions of it as evidence against law professor Peter Erlinder following his arrest in Kigali, Rwanda, in May 2010, after he arrived to defend opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.
Kagame’s prosecutors’ use of the lawsuit now as evidence against Ingabire herself make it even harder to argue. Ingabire stands in the dock in Kigali, facing a possible sentence on charges of terrorism and “genocide ideology,” i.e., refusing to deny that Hutus as well as Tutsis died in ethnic violence before, during and after the genocide.
Executive immunity after Clinton v. Jones
This is the first time that the U.S. State Department has requested immunity in a civil lawsuit for a foreign head of state in U.S. courts beyond that which U.S. presidents can claim after Clinton v. Jones, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting president of the United States has no immunity from civil litigation against him for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.
The State Department has claimed immunity for Kagame’s alleged wrongful acts before he became the president of Rwanda, an immunity which Bill Clinton could not claim from Paula Jones’s lawsuit, which she filed when he was president of the United States, suing him for what he allegedly did while he was governor of Arkansas.
On Monday, the wives of the assassinated Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi filed their “Objections to the August 29 State Department Suggestion of Immunity on Behalf of Rwanda’s President Kagame” and cited the State Department statement of interest of the United States of America, No. 1:104 CV 1360 (Feb. 14, 2011) (LMB), declaring that immunity is only applicable to “official acts by a sitting government,” with which all parties agree.
Law professor Peter Erlinder
“It is astounding that the Obama-Clinton-Koh State Department would choose Paul Kagame as the first head of state on whose behalf to assert immunity for unofficial actions,” observes law professor Peter Erlinder, “wrongful acts before becoming head of state, in light of the clear legal guidance of Clinton v. Jones and the factual record of massive crimes committed by Kagame before he became titular head of state under questionable circumstances in 2000 and again in 2003 and considering negative White House comments that ‘an election is not democracy’ after opposition parties were outlawed and journalists expelled and assassinated in the rigged election in August 2010.
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who would likely have prevailed over Paul Kagame had he allowed her to run in last year’s presidential election, has endured nearly a year in Rwanda’s maximum security prison and is now on trial.
“The objection on behalf of the presidential widows filed today lists French and Spanish indictments; four U.N. Security Council reports from 2001-2008; a 600-page UNHCHR report of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity between 1993 and 2003 issued Oct. 1, 2010; and U.N.-ICTR prosecutor reports from 1994 to 2003, all of which confirm massive crimes committed by Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front that are in the public record.
“The irony of the ‘Suggestion of Immunity’ is compounded because Victoire Ingabire, the would-be presidential candidate against Mr. Kagame whom I attempted to advise in Rwanda in May 2010, which resulted in my own arrest by Kagame on charges of ‘genocide ideology,’ is now in the dock in Kigali facing trumped-up terrorism charges, as reported in the New York Times Sept. 10, 2011, during the same week that the Obama administration has asserted immunity for massive crimes for which Mr. Kagame is charged in multiple criminal indictments and U.N. reports.
“The question is, why IS protecting Mr. Kagame so important for U.S. policy-makers, anyway?”
Habyarimana vs. Kagame, the civil lawsuit, is available here.
Suggestion of Immunity [Kagame’s] submitted by the United States of America is available here.
Objections to the August 29 State Department Suggestion of Immunity on Behalf of Rwanda’s President Kagame is available here.
Ingabire on trial, Kagame in France, Obama for Kagame immunity
Transcript of KPFA Weekend News report broadcast Sept. 10, 2011
KPFA Weekend News Host Cameron Jones: Victoire Ingabire’s trial will resume in Kigali, Rwanda, on Monday, where Ingabire is expected to testify in her own defense. Ingabire is on trial for terrorism and genocide ideology, which, in her case, means refusing to deny that Rwandan Hutus as well as Tutsis died in ethnic violence before, during and after the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.
Law professor Peter Erlinder, arrested last year when he went to Rwanda to defend presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, is featured in this poster worn by a protester against Rwandan President Kagame’s visit to Paris Sept. 12, 2011.
As Ingabire prepares to testify, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is on his way to France in response to the invitation of French President Nicholas Sarkozy and President Obama has requested immunity for Kagame as a head of state in the civil case, Habyarimana v. Kagame, which alleges Kagame and his officers’ guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars and demands damages for the widows of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira. Ann Garrison has this report:
KPFA/Ann Garrison: As Victoire Ingabire prepares to testify in her own defense, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is on his way to France at the invitation of French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy has sent French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé to Asia for the duration of Kagame’s visit.
Juppé has publicly disapproved of the invitation and said that the official Rwandan report on French involvement in the genocide is a collection of lies assembled to stop the investigation of Kagame and his senior officers and government officials’ crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, an investigation conducted by the French court of Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
Susana Sanz Guardo is a principle organizer with Basta de Impunidad en Ruanda – in English, End Impunity in Rwanda – an international organization based in Spain. KPFA spoke to Sanz Guardo as she prepared to travel to France to join Rwandan, Congolese, Burundian and international human rights activists in protesting Sarkozy’s invitation and Kagame’s presence in France.
Susana Sanz Guardo: His visit is really surrounded by a strange atmosphere, and has awakened most human rights organizations, who have asked to be mobilized. Military diplomatic French people are also doing their work, who are all against Kagame’s visit.
KPFA: On Friday, in the United States, President Obama asked a federal court in Oklahoma City to grant Kagame immunity in the civil suit alleging his guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars filed by William Mitchell law professor Peter Erlinder and Wichita lawyer Kurt Kerns. Rwandan American legal scholar Charles Kambanda, a professor at St. John’s University Law School in New York City, had this to say about Obama’s request:
Charles Kambanda: In this case, in my opinion, the interests of the people who have come to this court – of the United States court – are far greater than the interest the United States might have in protecting Kagame. Also the interest the United States has in protecting its image as the pioneer of fighting for the helpless people who are denied their rights by their leaders is far compelling to any interest the president of the U.S. can possibly think of in Kagame’s case.
