N.B. As per the disclaimer, neither the ICRC nor the authors can be identified with the opinions expressed in the Cases and Documents. Some cases even come to solutions that clearly violate IHL. They are nevertheless worthy of discussion, if only to raise a challenge to display more humanity in armed conflicts. Similarly, in some of the texts used in the case studies, the facts may not always be proven; nevertheless, they have been selected because they highlight interesting IHL issues and are thus published for didactic purposes.
[Source: ICTR, The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, ICTR-96-4-T, Trial Chamber 1, 2 September 1998; footnotes omitted; available on http://www.icty.org]
THE PROSECUTOR
v.
JEAN-PAUL AKAYESU
Case No. ICTR-96-4-T
JUDGEMENT [...]
1. INTRODUCTION [...]
6. [...] “The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, pursuant to his authority under Article 17 of the Statute of the Tribunal, charges:
JEAN PAUL AKAYESU
with GENOCIDE, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY and VIOLATIONS OF ARTICLE 3 COMMON TO THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS, as set forth below:
[...]
The Accused
- Jean Paul AKAYESU, born in 1953 in Murehe sector, Taba commune, served as bourgmestre of that commune from April 1993 until June 1994. Prior to his appointment as bourgmestre, he was a teacher and school inspector in Taba.
- As bourgmestre, Jean Paul AKAYESU was charged with the performance of executive functions and the maintenance of public order within his commune, subject to the authority of the prefect. He had exclusive control over the communal police, as well as any gendarmes put at the disposition of the commune. He was responsible for the execution of laws and regulations and the administration of justice, also subject only to the prefect’s authority.
General Allegations
- Unless otherwise specified, all acts and omissions set forth in this indictment took place between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994, in the commune of Taba, prefecture of Gitarama, territory of Rwanda.
- In each paragraph charging genocide, a crime recognized by Article 2 of the Statute of the Tribunal, the alleged acts or omissions were committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic or racial group.
- The victims in each paragraph charging genocide were members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
- In each paragraph charging crimes against humanity, crimes recognized by Article 3 of the Tribunal Statute, the alleged acts or omissions were committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population on national, political, ethnic or racial grounds.
- At all times relevant to this indictment, a state of internal armed conflict existed in Rwanda.
- The victims referred to in this indictment were, at all relevant times, persons not taking an active part in the hostilities.
- A. In this indictment, acts of sexual violence include forcible sexual penetration of the vagina, anus or oral cavity by a penis and/or of the vagina or anus by some other object, and sexual abuse, such as forced nudity.
- The accused is individually responsible for the crimes alleged in this indictment. Under Article 6(1) of the Statute of the Tribunal, individual criminal responsibility is attributable to one who plans, instigates, orders, commits or otherwise aids and abets in the planning, preparation or execution of any of the crimes referred to in Articles 2 to 4 of the Statute of the Tribunal.
Charges
- As bourgmestre, Jean Paul AKAYESU was responsible for maintaining law and public order in his commune. At least 2000 Tutsis were killed in Taba between April 7 and the end of June, 1994, while he was still in power. The killings in Taba were openly committed and so widespread that, as bourgmestre, Jean Paul AKAYESU must have known about them. Although he had the authority and responsibility to do so, Jean Paul AKAYESU never attempted to prevent the killing of Tutsis in the commune in any way or called for assistance from regional or national authorities to quell the violence.
- A. Between April 7 and the end of June, 1994, hundreds of civilians (hereinafter “displaced civilians”) sought refuge at the bureau communal. The majority of these displaced civilians were Tutsi. While seeking refuge at the bureau communal, female displaced civilians were regularly taken by armed local militia and/or communal police and subjected to sexual violence, and/or beaten on or near the bureau communal premises. Displaced civilians were also murdered frequently on or near the bureau communal premises. Many women were forced to endure multiple acts of sexual violence which were at times committed by more than one assailant. These acts of sexual violence were generally accompanied by explicit threats of death or bodily harm. The female displaced civilians lived in constant fear and their physical and psychological health deteriorated as a result of the sexual violence and beatings and killings.
- B. Jean Paul AKAYESU knew that the acts of sexual violence, beatings and murders were being committed and was at times present during their commission. Jean Paul AKAYESU facilitated the commission of the sexual violence, beatings and murders by allowing the sexual violence and beatings and murders to occur on or near the bureau communal premises. By virtue of his presence during the commission of the sexual violence, beatings and murders and by failing to prevent the sexual violence, beatings and murders, Jean Paul AKAYESU encouraged these activities. [...]
- On or about April 19, 1994, Jean Paul AKAYESU took 8 detained men from the Taba bureau communal and ordered militia members to kill them. The militia killed them with clubs, machetes, small axes and sticks. The victims had fled from Runda commune and had been held by Jean Paul AKAYESU.
- On or about April 19, 1994, Jean Paul AKAYESU ordered the local people and militia to kill intellectual and influential people. Five teachers from the secondary school of Taba were killed on his instructions. The victims were Theogene, Phoebe Uwineze and her fiance (whose name is unknown), Tharcisse Twizeyumuremye and Samuel. The local people and militia killed them with machetes and agricultural tools in front of the Taba bureau communal. [...]
Counts 7-8
(Crimes Against Humanity)
(Violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions)
By his acts in relation the murders of 8 detained men in front of the bureau communal as described in paragraph 19, Jean Paul AKAYESU committed:
COUNT 7: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY (murder) punishable by Article 3(a) of the Statute of the Tribunal; and
COUNT 8: VIOLATIONS OF ARTICLE 3 COMMON TO THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS, as incorporated by Article 4(a)(murder) of the Statute of the Tribunal.
Counts 9-10
(Crimes Against Humanity)
(Violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions)
By his acts in relation to the murders of 5 teachers in front of the bureau communal as described in paragraph 20, Jean Paul AKAYESU committed:
COUNT 9: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY (murder) punishable by Article 3(a) of the Statute of the Tribunal; and
COUNT 10: VIOLATIONS OF ARTICLE 3 COMMON TO THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS, as incorporated by Article 4(a)(murder) of the Statute of the Tribunal. [...]
Counts 13-15
(Crimes Against Humanity)
(Violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions)
By his acts in relation to the events at the bureau communal, as described in paragraphs 12(A) and 12(B), Jean Paul AKAYESU committed:
COUNT 13: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY (rape), punishable by Article 3(g) of the Statute of the Tribunal; and
COUNT 14: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, (other inhumane acts), punishable by Article 3(i) of the Statute of the Tribunal; and
COUNT 15: VIOLATIONS OF ARTICLE 3 COMMON TO THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS AND OF ARTICLE 4(2)(e) OF ADDITIONAL PROTOCOL 2, as incorporated by Article 4(e)(outrages upon personal dignity, in particular rape, degrading and humiliating treatment and indecent assault) of the Statute of the Tribunal. [...]
6. THE LAW [...]
6.3. Genocide (Article 2 of the Statute)
6.3.1. Genocide
- Article 2 of the Statute stipulates that the Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons responsible for genocide, complicity to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide and complicity in genocide. [...]
Crime of Genocide, punishable under Article 2(3)(a) of the Statute
- The definition of genocide, as given in Article 2 of the Tribunal’s Statute, is taken verbatim from Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”). It states:
“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
- The Genocide Convention is undeniably considered part of customary international law, [...].
- The Chamber notes that Rwanda acceded, by legislative decree, to the Convention on Genocide on 12 February 1975. Thus, punishment of the crime of genocide did exist in Rwanda in 1994, at the time of the acts alleged in the Indictment, and the perpetrator was liable to be brought before the competent courts of Rwanda to answer for this crime.
- Contrary to popular belief, the crime of genocide does not imply the actual extermination of group in its entirety, but is understood as such once any one of the acts mentioned in Article 2(2)(a) through 2(2)(e) is committed with the specific intent to destroy “in whole or in part” a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
- Genocide is distinct from other crimes inasmuch as it embodies a special intent or dolus specialis. Special intent of a crime is the specific intention, required as a constitutive element of the crime, which demands that the perpetrator clearly seeks to produce the act charged. Thus, the special intent in the crime of genocide lies in “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
- Thus, for a crime of genocide to have been committed, it is necessary that one of the acts listed under Article 2(2) of the Statute be committed, that the particular act be committed against a specifically targeted group, it being a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Consequently, in order to clarify the constitutive elements of the crime of genocide, the Chamber will first state its findings on the acts provided for under Article 2(2)(a) through Article 2(2)(e) of the Statute, the groups protected by the Genocide Convention, and the special intent or dolus specialis necessary for genocide to take place.
Killing members of the group (paragraph (a)):
- [...] It is accepted that there is murder when death has been caused with the intention to do so [...].
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (paragraph b)
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group does not necessarily mean that the harm is permanent and irremediable. [...]
- For purposes of interpreting Article 2 (2)(b) of the Statute, the Chamber takes serious bodily or mental harm, without limiting itself thereto, to mean acts of torture, be they bodily or mental, inhumane or degrading treatment, persecution.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (paragraph c):
- The Chamber holds that the expression deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, should be construed as the methods of destruction by which the perpetrator does not immediately kill the members of the group, but which, ultimately, seek their physical destruction.
- For purposes of interpreting Article 2(2)(c ) of the Statute, the Chamber is of the opinion that the means of deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or part, include, inter alia, subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (paragraph d):
- For purposes of interpreting Article 2(2)(d) of the Statute, the Chamber holds that the measures intended to prevent births within the group, should be construed as sexual mutilation, the practice of sterilization, forced birth control, separation of the sexes and prohibition of marriages. In patriarchal societies, where membership of a group is determined by the identity of the father, an example of a measure intended to prevent births within a group is the case where, during rape, a woman of the said group is deliberately impregnated by a man of another group, with the intent to have her give birth to a child who will consequently not belong to its mother’s group.
- Furthermore, the Chamber notes that measures intended to prevent births within the group may be physical, but can also be mental. For instance, rape can be a measure intended to prevent births when the person raped refuses subsequently to procreate, in the same way that members of a group can be led, through threats or trauma, not to procreate.
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (paragraph e)
- With respect to forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, the Chamber is of the opinion that, as in the case of measures intended to prevent births, the objective is not only to sanction a direct act of forcible physical transfer, but also to sanction acts of threats or trauma which would lead to the forcible transfer of children from one group to another.
- Since the special intent to commit genocide lies in the intent to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”, it is necessary to consider a definition of the group as such. Article 2 of the Statute, just like the Genocide Convention, stipulates four types of victim groups, namely national, ethnical, racial or religious groups.
- On reading through the travaux préparatoires of the Genocide Convention, it appears that the crime of genocide was allegedly perceived as targeting only “stable” groups, constituted in a permanent fashion and membership of which is determined by birth, with the exclusion of the more “mobile” groups which one joins through individual voluntary commitment, such as political and economic groups. Therefore, a common criterion in the four types of groups protected by the Genocide Convention is that membership in such groups would seem to be normally not challengeable by its members, who belong to it automatically, by birth, in a continuous and often irremediable manner.
- [...] [T]he Chamber holds that a national group is defined as a collection of people who are perceived to share a legal bond based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties.
- An ethnic group is generally defined as a group whose members share a common language or culture.
- The conventional definition of racial group is based on the hereditary physical traits often identified with a geographical region, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national or religious factors.
- The religious group is one whose members share the same religion, denomination or mode of worship. [...]
- As stated above, the crime of genocide is characterized by its dolus specialis, or special intent, which lies in the fact that the acts charged, listed in Article 2 (2) of the Statute, must have been “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
- Special intent is a well-known criminal law concept in the Roman-continental legal systems. It is required as a constituent element of certain offences and demands that the perpetrator have the clear intent to cause the offence charged. According to this meaning, special intent is the key element of an intentional offence, which offence is characterized by a psychological relationship between the physical result and the mental state of the perpetrator. [...]
- In concrete terms, for any of the acts charged under Article 2 (2) of the Statute to be a constitutive element of genocide, the act must have been committed against one or several individuals, because such individual or individuals were members of a specific group, and specifically because they belonged to this group. Thus, the victim is chosen not because of his individual identity, but rather on account of his membership of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The victim of the act is therefore a member of a group, chosen as such, which, hence, means that the victim of the crime of genocide is the group itself and not only the individual. [...]
- On the issue of determining the offender’s specific intent, the Chamber considers that intent is a mental factor which is difficult, even impossible, to determine. This is the reason why, in the absence of a confession from the accused, his intent can be inferred from a certain number of presumptions of fact. The Chamber considers that it is possible to deduce the genocidal intent inherent in a particular act charged from the general context of the perpetration of other culpable acts systematically directed against that same group, whether these acts were committed by the same offender or by others. Other factors, such as the scale of atrocities committed, their general nature, in a region or a country, or furthermore, the fact of deliberately and systematically targeting victims on account of their membership of a particular group, while excluding the members of other groups, can enable the Chamber to infer the genocidal intent of a particular act. [...]
6.5. Violations of Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II (Article 4 of the Statute) [...]
- Pursuant to Article 4 of the Statute, the Chamber shall have the power to prosecute persons committing or ordering to be committed serious violations of Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 for the Protection of War Victims, and of Additional Protocol II thereto of 8 June 1977. These violations shall include, but shall not be limited to: [See UN, Statute of the ICTR] [...]
- Prior to developing the elements for the above cited offences contained within Article 4 of the Statute, the Chamber deems it necessary to comment upon the applicability of common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II as regards the situation which existed in Rwanda in 1994 at the time of the events contained in the Indictment.