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TITLE: Ngeze/ Registry Officials Asked to Appear For Hearing On Motion |
AUTHOR: Deborah Mendelsohn |
PUB: InterNews |
DATE: February 2, 2001 |
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Trial Chamber I of the UN Tribunal for Rwanda has requested that Tribunal Registry officials appear in court n Monday to answer questions that may arise from a defense motion for the ismissal of charges. The motion was filed by the lawyer for defendant Hassan Ngeze partly on grounds of a search that was conducted in Ngeze's cell on 10 January. Ngeze is being tried alongside Jean Bosco Barayagwiza and Ferdinand Nahimana on charges of having used media to incite genocide in Rwanda. Barayagwiza and Ngeze have had websites since December last year. The sites are allegedly run by friends and relatives in the US and Europe. Ngeze's website has generated concern due to the presence of photographs taken within the UN Detention Facility [UNDF] in the pages. Tribunal officials say that the photographs constitute a breach of security and that it was this that prompted the search of his cell. Speaking to Internews on the matter, Tribunal spokesman Kingsley Moghalu said that the officials wanted to establish whether Ngeze was running the website from his cell. Ngeze's American lawyer, John Floyd, claimed in the motion that during the search Tribunal officials confiscated documents related to Ngeze's defense, hence violating the attorney client privilege "and rendering the documents useless for his defense." Officers from the Electronic Data Processing section [EDP] of the Tribinal and UNDF security are said to have conducted the search. Although UNDF matters are usually handled by the Lawyers and Detention Facilities Management Section [LDFMS], all sections fall under the Registry. The Chamber has asked that officers from LDFMS and the General Legal Services Section of the Registry be present. Ngeze's motion alleges that photographs, lists of witnesses, and diskettes with defense material were some of the documents taken and that, since the search, two of Ngeze's potential witnesses have been killed. Moghalu has denied that defense documents were confiscated. END |