i) VATICAN 'SAVES PRIEST' FROM GENOCIDE TRIAL. ITALY is refusing to hand over to the international war crimes tribunal a Rwandan Catholic priest wanted on genocide charges. He is accused of ordering his own church to be bulldozed, crushing and killing up to 2,500 parishioners. Italian judicial authorities claim that an ad hoc decree is required for them to co-operate with the United Nations tribunal for Rwanda. Authoritative sources say the true reason for Italy's stalling is discreet pressure from the Vatican. Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, says that, as a UN member state, Italy is in breach of its international obligations. "It's a scandal. Belgrade has handed over Milosevic, but Rome won't grant me this arrest," she complained after announcing that three other Rwandan suspects, including a priest, had been arrested on the tribunal's orders in Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands on Thursday. Del Ponte did not identify her target in Italy, who is the subject of a secret indictment, but well-informed sources in the Hague and in Rome confirmed that the wanted priest is Father Athanase Seromba. A Hutu, Seromba had allegedly sided in 1994 with a campaign to exterminate Rwanda's Tutsi minority. The destruction of his church at Nyange on April 16, 1994, was one of the most notorious massacres of the genocide in which 800,000 died. Seromba travelled afterwards to Florence with the help of supporters in the Catholic church. He rejoined the priesthood under an assumed name. In November 1999 The Sunday Times found he had established a new life for himself as a deputy priest at a church in Florence under the name of Don Anastasio Sumba Bura. The UN tribunal, based in Arusha, Tanzania, opened an investigation and began collecting evidence. Del Ponte formally requested Seromba's extradition from Italy at the beginning of this month. But statements emanating from the Catholic church in Florence suggest it stands by him. "Everyone has a positive impression of him," said Riccardo Bigi, a spokesman for the diocese. "He's definitely not willing to talk about Rwanda, but that is understandable because he suffered a great deal. >From what we know of him, it's highly improbable that the accusations against him are true." In Rwanda in 1994 the church was the single most powerful institution after the government. But its clergy were not exempt from the country's pervasive racism and it failed miserably to prevent the genocide. The Vatican has since ignored appeals to purge its ranks of suspected killers. A few weeks ago it even questioned the objectivity of a Belgian court that gave two Rwandan Benedictine nuns long jail sentences for genocide. Rakiya Omaar, the director of African Rights, a respected London-based human rights organisation, said: "At the very least the church should have mounted an inquiry." Callers to the parish church of San Mauro a Signa in Florence yesterday were first told that Seromba was on holiday, but he later emerged briefly to deny the accusations. " I had nothing to do with the Nyange massacre," he said. "Leave me in peace, I don't want to talk." The Vatican declined to comment on allegations that it had put pressure
on Italy to block Seromba's arrest. The priest's comfortable exile
cannot end soon enough for the small band of survivors of Nyange,
however. "I lost my father, my wife, my child, my stepmother, my young
brother, my sisters and many others in the church," said Bertin Ndakubana,
a parish councillor. "Where was the servant of God, Seromba, at that
moment?" ii) THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT MUST FULFILL ITS OBLIGATIONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ARREST THE RWANDAN CATHOLIC PRIEST. Amnesty International [AI] is making an urgent appeal to Italy to fulfil its international obligations and immediately arrest a Rwandese citizen who has reportedly been indicted by the ICTR to ensure that the accused person does not flee. According to statements made last week by the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR, the Italian authorities have refused to fulfill their obligations under international law to implement an international warrant issued by the ICTR for the arrest of a Rwandese national resident in Italy. The individual has reportedly been indicted by the ICTR on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity and the arrest was requested as a preliminary step in his transfer to the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. Although not named publicly by the Tribunal, the individual in question has been widely identified by the international media as a Rwandese Roman Catholic priest, Father Athenase Seromba, alleged to be complicit in the deaths of 2,000 Tutsis crushed to death with bulldozers at the Parish of Nyange in Kibuye on 16 April 1994. Amnesty International does not, however, have confirmation that this identification is correct. The Italian authorities have indicated that their refusal to cooperate with the ICTR's request is on the grounds that, under Italy's domestic legislation, there is no legal basis to proceed with the arrest and that the Italian government would have to issue an ad hoc decree in order to carry out any such arrest. Article 2 of UN Security Council Resolution 955 of November 1994, which established the ICTR directs that Aall States shall cooperate fully with the International Tribunal, and under Article 28 of the Statute of the ICTR Italy is obliged to comply without delay with any request from the ICTR for the arrest and surrender into its custody of any person indicted by the Tribunal. There is no exception under international law whatsoever to this obligation for states that have failed to enact national legislation. Indeed, it is a fundamental rule of international law, as reflected in Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to which Italy is a party, that "[a] party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty." The Republic of Serbia recently recognized this obligation when it surrendered former President Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, even though there was no national or state law expressly authorizing his surrender. AI urges the Italian government to fulfill its obligations under
the UN Charter to implement a Security Council resolution and its
other obligations under international law -- including the Genocide
Convention, to which it acceded in 1952 -- to ensure that the perpetrators
of serious human rights violations are brought to justice. iii) WHILE SWITZERLAND, BELGIUM AND HOLLAND ARREST THREE RWANDAN MEN WANTED ON GENOCIDE CHARGES, ITALY REFUSES TO ARREST ANOTHER SUSPECT DUE TO PRESSURE FROM THE VATICAN. Three Rwandan men, including an ex-minister, have been arrested in Europe in connection to the 1994 Rwandan genocide and are to be transferred to the UN war crimes tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. During a press conference in Geneva, the chief UN war crimes chief-prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, welcomed the speedy arrests of a former Rwandan minister in Switzerland, a former military chaplain in Belgium, and a Rwandan musician in Holland. The three men are charged separately with genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity. Their extradition will bring to 50 the number of people in the tribunal's custody. BELGIUM ARRESTS MINISTER The former minister, Emmanuel Ndindabahizi, 51, was arrested by police in an early morning raid on his home in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers. Mr Ndindabahizi was finance minister in Rwanda from April to July 1994, during the massacre of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Officials said that he had applied for asylum in Belgium, but was turned down and will remain in custody until his transfer to Arusha within three months. SWITZERLAND ARRESTS PRIEST In Switzerland, the authorities arrested a former Rwandan army chaplain sought for similar charges. A spokesman for the tribunal, Kingsley Moghalu, detailed the accusations against Emmanuel Rekundo, an ordained Catholic priest who is believed to have arrived in Switzerland in 1999. "He is accused of crimes in Kabgayi, he visited a seminary there and a school where he was always escorted by soldiers and Interahamwe (militia) while allegedly hunting down Tutsi refugees and killing them," Mr Moghalu was quoted as saying by the AP news agency. "He ordered the killing of a Tutsi priest, who was a colleague, and participated in denunciation campaigns," he added. Mr Rukundo, 42, has the right to appeal the extradition decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, Switzerland's highest court. HOLLAND ARRESTS MUSICIAN Simon Bikindi, a Rwandan musician, was arrested by Dutch police in the city of Leiden. A human rights group that has investigated the genocide, African Rights, says Mr Bikindi wrote songs and poems that incited against Tutsis. Mrs del Ponte said there should have been a fourth arrest in Italy, but that the Italian authorities have decided to postpone the arrest saying there was no legal basis. Visibly angry at the Italian decision, Mrs del Ponte said she hoped
Italy would learn how to cooperate with the International Criminal
Tribunal: "I am surprised and stupefied, because apparently Italy
doesn't know that the obligation to execute our arrest warrant is
an international obligation without need of an internal law. "In the
light of the charges brought against the accused I fervently hope
that Italy will prove itself able to meet its responsibilities and
that it will agree to co-operate with the ICTR."
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