Transcript of June 7 - Peter Robinson
Transcript of June 7 - Peter Robinson
Transcript of June 7 - Peter Robinson
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KAREMERA ET AL MONDAY, 7 JUNE 2010<br />
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MR. PRESIDENT:<br />
You may.<br />
MR. ROBINSON:<br />
Thank you. I think the things that Mr. Webster has said are important to address, and I think they need<br />
to be rebutted. And I appreciate the spirit in which he's made his comments, and I don't have any<br />
problem with what he's said, and he's doing his job.<br />
First <strong>of</strong> all, I think really if Mr. Erlinder was arrested for his representation <strong>of</strong> Victoire Ingabire, who's a<br />
candidate for president in Rwanda, or for his lawsuit against President Kagame in the United States, I<br />
never would have made that motion and I wouldn't be standing here asking the ICTR to do anything<br />
about it.<br />
While I might sympathise with Mr. Erlinder's plight, I wouldn't see it as the role <strong>of</strong> the ICTR to be<br />
intervening in matters between Rwanda that don't really concern it. But the fact is that what<br />
Mr. Erlinder is charged with -- and those charges were read to him on Friday -- deal exclusively with the<br />
comments and papers he's written in connection with his representation <strong>of</strong> Major Ntabakuze at the<br />
ICTR.<br />
And so, therefore, as a factual matter, the Tribunal is implicated and involved. And Rwanda is a<br />
member state <strong>of</strong> the United Nations, and they have an obligation not to take action which interferes with<br />
a fair trial in this Tribunal. And a fair trial is impossible under these circumstances, not only for<br />
Mr. Erlinder's client, who finds his lawyer locked up, but for all <strong>of</strong> us, and Mr. Nzirorera, in particular,<br />
whose defence is that there was no state-sponsored genocide in Rwanda.<br />
So I just leave you with five words: I can't do my job. Thank you.<br />
MR. WEYL:<br />
Mr. President, I have listened to Mr. Webster, and he has somehow addressed some <strong>of</strong> our objections.<br />
But the crux <strong>of</strong> the matter remains that we know that <strong>Peter</strong> Erlinder was first charged in respect <strong>of</strong><br />
statements he had made. That is already documented and is beyond any controversy. But we also<br />
know that some emotions were stirred because <strong>of</strong> these charges and it is for those reasons that the<br />
Rwandan authorities tried to circumvent the lawyer's immunity by introducing new elements.<br />
Maybe I did not say this a short while ago, but let me say it now. The communiqué <strong>of</strong> the spokesperson<br />
<strong>of</strong> the Tribunal was rather distressful for me, because it simply said that the Tribunal was concerned<br />
about Mr. Erlinder's situation, but that Mr. Erlinder was not on mission for the Tribunal and that he was<br />
being charged for reasons that were not connected to the Tribunal. He went on to say that the Tribunal<br />
was going to contact the Rwandan authorities to find out whether there were any elements in those<br />
JEAN BAIGENT - ICTR - TRIAL CHAMBER III - page 11