PRESS BRIEFING OF UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR LEGAL AFFAIRS

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING OF UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR LEGAL AFFAIRS

Hans Corell, the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel, said the decision handed down yesterday by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in the case involving a former mayor, was a decisive step in the creation of an international justice system.

He told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing yesterday that the Tribunal, by its reasoning, had added to an understanding of what the crime of genocide meant, and that was "very, very important". In practical terms, the Tribunal had demonstrated that it functioned and that the population of Rwanda would see that the crimes which had been committed were being addressed. "I think it is fair to say that if the Tribunal had not been set up, the people that are now in the custody of the Tribunal would not probably had been reached by the Rwandan authorities", he said.

Mr. Corell said his hope was that a future international criminal court would have the same preventive effect that criminal justice systems had at the national level.

(The Rwanda Tribunal yesterday morning, in the first-ever judgement of its kind, found Jean-Paul Akayesu, a former mayor of Taba, guilty of genocide. Sentence is to be pronounced later.)

At the outset of the briefing, Mr. Corell explained that he was not a spokesman for the Tribunal, which was an independent subsidiary organ of the Security Council. His presence at the briefing was to assist the Spokesman for the Secretary-General in discussing the 300-page judgement, which had been summarized by the Tribunal in 20 pages. He had only read the summary, which had been delivered by the President of the Tribunal, Judge Laity Kama of Senegal, at headquarters of the Tribunal in Arusha.

Focusing on three points, Mr. Corell said yesterday's action was the first time that the crime of genocide had been tried by an international court. The crime had been defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, but since then no international court had adjudicated on the basis of the Convention's provisions. He said those provisions had been incorporated in the Statute of the Rwanda Tribunal. In defining the crime of genocide, he said the Tribunal had discussed extensively how it understood the provisions. In its judgement, the Tribunal had spent some time explaining the background to the situation in Rwanda, the context within which the situation had evolved, the environment and why the crime of genocide was understood to have occurred.

The Tribunal's explanation on the effect of sexual violence and how it could constitute genocide was an interesting part of its judgement, from a

legal point of view, he said. He referred correspondents to paragraph 51 of the summary of the judgement in which the Tribunal underscored that rape and sexual violence, in its opinion, constituted genocide in the same way as any other act, as long as they met the criteria for determining the crime of genocide: acts committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group, targeted as such. The Tribunal had gone on to discuss in detail the nature of the violence that was inflicted upon the women. It also drew the conclusion that rape was committed against Tutsi women, specifically. "This is the connecting link between the crime of rape, for example, and the crime of genocide", he said. The Tribunal, in its judgement, had indicated that the crime reflected the determination to make Tutsi women suffer and to mutilate them even before they were killed, with the intent to destroy the Tutsi group, while inflicting acute suffering on its members in the process.

Mr. Corell said that those were general reflections or statements the Tribunal had made in the process of arriving at the principle of individual responsibility. It was one thing for the Tribunal to find that the crime of genocide had been committed, and another to determine individual responsibility. Mr. Corell said he understood that the Tribunal had found that Jean-Paul Akayesu was guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. On certain counts, he was found not guilty, Mr. Corell noted and referred correspondents to the press statement issued by the Tribunal. Specifically, Mr. Akayesu was found guilty of genocide, and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. In that context, he said it was interesting to note how the Tribunal viewed Mr. Akayesu as a person. He had been a good mayor of a small city in Rwanda. Mr. Akayesu had himself stated that in exercising his functions he was a trusted person and that when he spoke or asked, people followed his advice. The Trial Chamber concluded that he had a standing in the community, Mr. Corell said. It was in that context that Mr. Akayesu's statements had been examined by the Tribunal. The crime against humanity was defined as extermination, murder, torture, rape and other inhumane acts. As far as the details were concerned, he referred correspondents to the summary.

Mr. Corell observed that, to a large extent, the Tribunal had relied on statements from witnesses or victims. The findings were thus very much related to information provided before the Tribunal. The Tribunal had firmly established the responsibility of the accused. The defence had argued that the defendant was helpless to prevent the commission of such acts because the effective power in the commune lay with the Interhamwe. The Tribunal had found that indeed, at the beginning of April 1994, Mr. Akayesu had not participated in the crimes. But later, on a particular date, he had become actively involved and had participated personally. The Tribunal also found he had been present when other atrocities had been committed, and he had induced others to act.

Mr. Corell noted that, on certain counts, Mr. Akayesu was found not guilty, particularly on those which had related to Article 3 common to the

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Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocol II which addressed certain crimes committed in an internal armed conflict and directed against civilian populations by armed forces. The Trial Chamber found that the prosecution had failed to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Akayesu was a member of the armed forces and that he had the authority to support and carry out the war effort.

There was a right of appeal under the Statute of the Tribunal, and it was something that might occur, Mr. Corell said. The Appeals Chamber -- consisting of five judges -- was the same for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Asked how long the appeal process could take, he said there was only one appeal to the Appeals Chamber, which was the highest body. Appeals procedures might not necessarily be protracted.

A correspondent asked whether the procedures could not go on for a long period, considering the administrative problems the Tribunal had faced in Arusha. She also noted that one of the Judges (Judge Lennart Aspegren of Sweden) had resigned. Mr. Corell said the issue had to be viewed in the context that members of the Tribunal were pioneers. The decision to set up the two Tribunals -- for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda -- had been a political one by the Security Council. The seats of the Tribunals had been decided by the legislative bodies of the United Nations. Those asked to serve on the Tribunals had to do the very best they could with the available resources.

He said, admittedly, there had been problems in the past, but they had now been effectively addressed by those directly concerned, in particular, by the Registrar, Prosecutor, and the Judges. The Registry, perhaps, was the entity within the Tribunal that had been the most focused upon, a year and a half ago. He said Karl Paschke, Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services, in his second report, had said that "things were definitely going in the right direction". The fact that a judgement had been handed down was a testimony to the improvements that had taken place.

Mr. Corell drew attention to the fact that national courts, established decades or even centuries ago, had an extensive body of law and precedence to rely upon. Those international courts had to start from scratch, meaning every issue that emerged had to be addressed. Once precedents evolved, new trial chambers might be able to rely on them. "So, these are the first steps in a development that I see in the very long perspective and which was recently addressed in Rome at the Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court", he said. It was necessary for the world to have an international criminal jurisdiction to deal with the situations where national courts, for political reasons, did not operate or where national courts had disappeared, as in Rwanda. It was in that situation that the Rwanda

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Tribunal's problems should be viewed. A second judgement would be handed down in two days, which related to a sentencing in another case.

With respect to Judge Aspegren, Mr. Corell told the correspondents that he was "very sad and also surprised" to learn of the judge's resignation. He knew him, he said, as they had served in similar positions, although under different entities, in Sweden. If there were problems at the Tribunal's headquarters, efforts should have been made to deal with them. "There are always problems within any body", he said. "We should try to solve them within that body by constructive and determined action."

He told a questioner that the fact that a judgement had been handed down would be of tremendous importance and influence other cases before the Tribunal.

A correspondent asked, since the accused still had the right of appeal, did not the Legal Counsel think it was premature for a high United Nations official to discuss the activities of the Tribunal? Mr. Corell replied that, as he had remarked at the outset of the briefing, his role was to assist the Spokesman in briefing correspondents. It had been felt in the Secretariat that there would be questions from journalists about the judgement. The text might not be so easy to understand by those who were not present at Arusha when the judgement was handed down. It was important that news about the judgement must be disseminated around the world, because criminal justice not only worked in relation to a particular individual, but it also had a general impact. He noted that he had been careful from the beginning to refer to the official material distributed by the Tribunal itself.

Finally, he was asked whether he thought the work of such a tribunal would really prevent people, no matter their country, from committing mass murder. Mr. Corell replied that: "It took us hundreds of years to build judicial systems at the national level. We have now started to take steps into the international arena, and I'm sure that in a few years' time international criminal jurisdiction and international cooperation to secure international criminal jurisdiction would be considered just as natural as cooperation in any other field in which the United Nations or other international organizations are involved." Whether it would stop criminal activity completely was another matter. That, however, did not mean steps should not be taken to fight crime whenever it occurred. He added that he was convinced that there were potential warlords who would now think twice before starting operations.

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