Ex-Rwandan Premier Admits Genocide Role

Jean Kambanda, Rwanda’s former prime minister, pleaded guilty Friday before a United Nations tribunal to charges that he was a mastermind of the 1994 slaughter of more than 800,000 Rwandans, most of them ethnic Tutsis.

The onetime economist and insurance executive, dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt and patterned tie, spoke in a calm voice to judges here of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Kambanda, 42, now faces an Aug. 31 hearing at which he could receive a maximum life sentence on charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and two counts of crimes against humanity.

His conviction was considered crucial because Kambanda is expected to testify against 23 other high-profile but lower-ranking defendants jailed in Arusha and accused of genocide-related crimes.

With the admission of such grave wrongdoing by so senior a Rwandan official as Kambanda, these suspects--and perhaps tens of thousands of others--imprisoned in Arusha and in Rwandan facilities have little choice but to admit their crimes or modify their defenses in hopes of getting more lenient sentences, experts said.

Kambanda’s confession of guilt, formally delivered under seal in an agreement with prosecutors, eliminates what had been an anticipated defense by many Hutu extremists involved in the huge-scale Rwandan killing--that the ghastly slaughter resulted from civil war and was not a premeditated campaign by one group of people against another.

He eventually is expected to offer answers to major questions surrounding the mysterious downing of the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprian Ntayamira. Both died in the crash. Kambanda should be able to offer intricate details of the planning and execution of the genocide.

This, in turn, may greatly expedite the work of the U.N. tribunal, which has been widely criticized for its glacial pace and administrative inefficiency.

“You now have someone in the inner circle who says, ‘We did these things,’ ” said Agwu Okali, an official with the international tribunal. “It has tremendous impact on the determination of the evidence, particularly with respect to the other defendants. . . . It’s going to be hard for someone in the face of this to doubt that this thing took place.”

Okali said Kambanda’s confession of guilt came “from his conscience. He is telling the others that what we did was wrong.”

Rakiya Omaar, director of Africa Rights, a London-based human rights group, agreed, saying: “The fact that [Kambanda] has settled accounts with his own conscience, in spite of the intense propaganda machine both inside and outside Rwanda, is very encouraging to the prospects of justice.” His guilty plea is likely to “create panic among the suspects, both in Rwanda and at the tribunal, because their whole philosophy, their whole ideology--to deny that there was a genocide--is no longer valid.”

Rwandan Hutus, particularly those in extremist exile organizations, have insisted that the killings of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus was a result of their nation’s civil war and that the then-government was not involved. They assert that uncontrollable local militias got out of hand.

But a tribunal source said Friday that the former prime minister, in his pleadings, “makes it crystal clear” that “genocide was a state policy” and that the aim was to “eliminate” the Tutsis.

Kambanda had been a member of an extremist political party and was appointed prime minister of the interim government on April 8, 1994, two days after Habyarimana’s plane crashed over the Rwandan capital, Kigali. The deaths of the two leaders launched what became a three-month blood bath.

As prime minister, Kambanda incited and encouraged Hutus, going on the radio--Rwanda’s chief means of mass communication--to urge fellow Hutus to abuse, hurt or kill Tutsis and Hutu moderates. He congratulated those followers who complied. He is also said to have ordered roads to be blocked, knowing that this would trap fleeing refugees and result in their certain death or injury.

He saw to it that arms and ammunition were distributed to certain political parties, militias and regular civilians to carry out the slaughter.

Kambanda knew firsthand, from provincial visits, that massacres against civilians were underway, according to the indictment filed against him, which says: “In his capacity as prime minister, Jean Kambanda failed in his duty to ensure the security of the Rwandan population.”

Omaar, of Africa Rights, said of Kambanda: “He really played a critical role in getting the educated elite to support the genocide.”

The mass killings stopped after Tutsi rebels seized power in the summer of 1994.

Kambanda was arrested in Nairobi, Kenya, last July along with six other high-level officials of the former Rwandan government. He was transferred to custody of the international tribunal and kept isolated from other prisoners.

On Friday, Judge Laity Kama, president of the U.N. tribunal, quizzed him carefully as to whether he understood the charges, his plea and the consequences. Kambanda replied passively of his heinous acts: “Mr. president, I did it consciously and voluntarily. No one forced me to do so.” He added that he fully understood “the consequences of my guilty plea.”

Oliver Michael Inglis, his defense attorney, said of his client: “He realized that . . . as prime minister, he had to take the rap. It was a wise decision.”

Deputy prosecutor Bernard Muna said Kambanda will now be a vital source of information in other pending cases. The former official also has “demonstrated his willingness to come forward and testify when the time comes,” said Muna, who noted that “no promises” had been made to Kambanda about a lesser sentence for his plea and cooperation.

Gerald Gahima, Rwandan deputy minister of justice, said the tribunal should be commended for its success in the Kambanda case, but “they still have a long way to go.”

“This is an opportunity for both the U.N. and various countries,” he added, “to help bring the perpetrators of genocide to justice. [Kambanda] knows them, he worked with them.”

More than 125,000 people charged with genocide-related crimes still cram Rwanda’s jails. Only 330 or so cases have been adjudicated, with 112 death sentences imposed by December 1997, the first year in which Rwanda conducted such trials.

The international tribunal, which started its work in November 1996, has been even slower. Not a single tribunal case had been brought to conclusion before Friday. But Kingsley Moghalu, a legal advisor to the judicial body, observed that the Kambanda pleas should “show the people of Rwanda that this tribunal is determined to render justice for the genocide, that this tribunal is serious and credible.”

Just one week ago, the Rwandan government demonstrated its resolve. Despite worldwide pleas for mercy and an appeal for clemency from Pope John Paul II, Rwandan firing squads executed 22 individuals convicted of genocide.