Arusha 9

Hollywood pales in comparison to the ‘espionage’ thrillers at the ICTR BY GEORGE KAGAME Arusha One of the first impressions a new comer discovers at the ICTR is the existence some imagined covert network of spies.
The spies are allegedly working for or against the prosecution and defense sides of detained suspects of the Rwandan Genocide.
It is highly advised that you cross check any information you receive from first acquaintances when you have just reached here as a result. According to one veteran Arusha journalist the 'agents' of these networks collect their information from chit chats in bars, restaurants, and any other social interaction place or event in or around Arusha. Therefore, after a few days in these highly protected premises of the ICTR and the respect that inevitably comes with working for the United Nations, I was disappointed by the limited or lack of interaction among ICTR employees. Josh Kron, the Kigali based free lance journalist from New York called it; "effects of bad first impressions that change with time".
The first impressions have unfortunately not changed, all the people that work here socialize along carefully chosen lines.
That is where the ‘agents’ come in. This factor however is mainly limited among the Rwandan community here, since the 1000 employees of the ICTR coming from 99 different nationalities, the issue of spies does not concern them.
I arrived in Arusha when Manchester United was playing Chelsea in the 2008 final of the European Champions' league, located a few metres away from the third street lodge where I was residing was a lower scale sports bar.
Dressed in sports camouflage, I headed to the bar and with flawless Swahili interlaced with well calculated English words; I posed as a Tanzanian university student from Dar Salaam heading to Mwanza for holidays in front of five fellow football enthusiasts who also claimed to be Tanzanians from Arusha.
The rest is mere details but after several weeks I crossed paths with one of the football fellows in the corridors, he was speaking fluent Kinyarwanda, we have never exchanged another word.
Apparently at the ICTR, normal professional suspicion goes deeper than the episodes John Grisham the American legal writer pictures in his famous novels. People working for the defense really dislike the ones in prosecution; this mutual feeling however is not mainly among the legal practitioners like the lawyers and judges.

It is common among the technical staff of both sides and even support sectors like the media. Therefore, there was no debate as to which spy network when I belonged to when i arrived at the ICTR.
The New Times as a pro government newspaper is as such ‘designated’ to be in cohort with the prosecution side, which places anyone associated with it in the capacity of government spy.

It also means that everyone in the defense team is on the other side.
Journalists are trained to be in the middle of any story they follow and yet take no side, and the ICTR itself has issued many statements about unity and reconciliation in Rwanda-which would give the impression the ICTR itself, is serious about unity. Those principles do not apply here. Such state of affairs has ensured the same ICTR employ a very sophisticated security system at all the premises of its employees, ICTR premises, UN detention facility and airport. The detainees themselves are given state of the art protection. The ICTR security detail was not able to detect a website that Hassan Ngeze one of the detainees was running from the comfort of his cell at the UNDF.


However, even this security is big joke. Currently, there is a story from impeccable sources that a defense witness escaped last week after reaching Arusha, where he was supposed to testify in one high profile case. Reliable sources say the witness disappeared on the eve of his appearance in court.
If that is not surprising then consider, a recent scene in court. The typical Rwandan names which have the name of God mentioned in them caused quite an embarrassing moment that only the ICTR can afford.

The incident was caused due a misspelled name, whereby a wrong person ended up appearing in the witness box and it took court 30 minutes to see their mistake. The witness appearing for the defense side had the prosecution team fuming for having the wrong person in cross examination.

The name of the right witness was supposed to begin with 'Hiti', instead defense presented one whose name began with 'Habi'.
That day, proceedings stopped after those thirty minutes, and the next day, the ICTR announced their mandate had been extended by the UN Security Council till the end of 2009.
The ICTR security is not just a joke, it is as well dramatic. It is mandatory that all individuals connected to the ICTR in one way or another move around with special identity cards hanging around their necks like slave numbers.
These cards have specialized codes, which ensure or deny entry for the holders for access to the different departments of the UN. Also employees of the ICTR have electric gadgets placed in all rooms of their houses for rapid security response if the employee is attacked at home. And many of them live in top notch apartments built purposely for the UN market place.


In such sophistication, it is dramatic that a witness disappears.
It is also funny that the entire espionage system employed at the ICTR and its stakeholders, an alleged suspect can infiltrate the system, and even get employed the ICTR itself. That is exactly what happened in the case of Simeon Nshingamihigo. Nshingamihigo is a classic movie story.
Having been a participant in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, he escaped to DR Congo after 1994. Nshamihigo, who was deputy prosecutor during the genocide, was working at the international tribunal as an investigator for the defense team of a former military commander who was a close ally during the slaughter and is now convicted, Samuel Imanishimwe.
Nshingamihigo was arrested in 2001 at the ICTR premises after he was discovered working at the United Nations court under a false name.
He was detained after a witness at one of the trials recognized him and revealed his true identity as one of the alleged organizers of the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of fellow Rwandans.
Nshamihigo was detained by tribunal security staff and then handed over to immigration officials in Tanzania, after it was discovered he was using an assumed name and a false passport. He was going by the name of Sammy Bahati Weza and claiming to be a Congolese citizen instead of a Rwandan.
The judgment in his case is due before the end of 2008.