FEBRUARY2007

The General's Trial: Dallaire Brought Around -- 6 December 2006 by Mick Collins on Fri 22 Dec 2006 12:07 PM EST [

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA

CASE NO.: ICTR-00-56-T THE PROSECUTOR
CHAMBER II OF THE TRIBUNAL
v.
AUGUSTIN NDINDILIYIMANA
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER NZUWONEMEYE
INNOCENT SAGAHUTU
AUGUSTIN BIZIMUNGU

General Dallaire's Trial, on the Rwanda Massacres
Answering the question below, we see that answer is the key statement, made by General Dallaire that gives the real flavour of the emergency and caustically reflects the respect and demands made by certain people (UN), who have no idea either, of the time line within which one works in an emergency. And neither do these certain people have any concept that if their demands are not met that they might have approached the question incorrectly from the beginning.As it is - afterwards they are eager to condemn those who cannot fulfil their demands. These very problems are met with in many proportions throughout life and thus the actual legal aspect of this matter is reduced to commonsense proportions that unfortunately the accusers (UN) are never ever able to accept.:

Q. General Dallaire, I put it to you that the effective conquest by the RPF of Kabgayi was on the 2nd June, that is, the very day that you received the request from Kofi Annan. The bishops were executed on the 5th of June; that is three days later. And I put it to you, General, that at that time you had all the necessary time to react to counter that threat, and I would like you to explain to the Court what were the actions that UNAMIR attempted carrying out between the 2nd and 5th June to protect those people.

A. On the 17th of May, the UN gave me the mandate to go and assist in the distribution of humanitarian aid and also in protecting people in vulnerable positions. In giving me that mandate, they gave me authority to increase my force from about 450, who were already protecting five sites, plus those who were conducting the patrols, plus those who were out there trying to protect people, save them, bring them in and the like. I needed those extra troops to do exactly what Kabgayi was, that is, to go and stop the killing and protecting. The first reinforcements arrived in the last week of July, and they were Ethiopians who had absolutely no skills in the particular operational concept that I had written. And so I totally agree with you, that that demand, amongst probably 5- to 600 other demands, from some very senior people, including heads of states, including ministers of foreign affairs, including very influential people who've got a lot of money and who've got a lot of influence, including people who sing for their life and are known internationally, asking me to risk my soldiers continuously to save them. And we saved over 700 of them, and in that case I did not have the resources to get out to Kabgayi. And if they had deployed those forces within the ten days that I had asked for them, the people in Kabgayi and those people would probably be still alive. And so I do not remember specifically giving any orders of moving assets there, I could have, and that would have been, at best, 4 to 6 military observers, unarmed.

To demonstrate accurately the foolish elevation of some UN commands over others that have led to this disreputable case we read subsequently:

Q. Therefore, General, Kofi Annan makes a request to you, a specific request; Kofi Annan tells you that, "I have a request from the Pope himself," talking about the bishops of Kabgayi, and the Pope wants UNAMIR to intervene, and Kofi Annan requests you to intervene, and I understand the explanation that you have given. But my question is as follows: Did you send back a cable message to Annan saying that, "There is nothing I can do; I do not have a capability, and I'm sorry, I'm not able to accede to fulfill your requests"? Did you tell Annan that on account of the number of troops at your disposal, on account of your capability, you are not able to honour his request? And if you did so, when?

A. I do not specifically remember responding to that request as so many others that were put. However, if you were able to find in your file search the code cable coming back from Annan to me in about that time frame or a little earlier, saying that they were very sorry, that they were under enormous pressure in DPKO by senior peoples from around the world of insisting on us in the field trying to save people, knowing full well that we did not have the capabilities to do so, that we were putting people enormously at risk in trying to do it, and that it was up to my judgment of whether or not I could conduct them or not, and it was entirely into my decisions. And so we did a whole bunch of them, and I don't know whether I was able to send a patrol out to Kabgayi. We would have to look at the logs. But, again, in Kabgayi, as I say, the best they could have gotten at that time would have been four to six UN observers, unarmed, and hopefully that would have been enough mal suasion to prevent the killing that happened.

There follows another example of the legal propaganda that a lawyer is able to weld as an accusation:

General Dallaire : In regards to the killings on the night of the 17th to the 18th, we conducted three separate boards of enquiry. One started with the observers and if you maybe remember, I actually went personally to the site that same day and walked up the hill and didn't make it to where the children were, but took a personal look at the situation. Secondly, we ran a board of enquiry inside of UNAMIR and that proved to be inclusive and not transparent enough for the media or the people. And so we ran a third one which was run by members of the political side of our house, plus representatives of both the government and the RPF, and that board of enquiry was still inclusive in its results, and mostly because we had no solid investigative tools to prove who actually did it. Now, in regards to my deductions, my deductions come from the fact that these killings were done on five different places, that the mayor, I believe, of one of the towns or something was able to report it early that morning, that these five things had happened, yet he was in no way in a position to physically check them out. And we still don't know how he found out so fast about what had happened that night. The killings happened on the night that the president had come to open up my headquarters and was demonstrating an enormous amount of goodwill in his speech, and so it was an incredible set of circumstances that.. that - that these killings happened at that point. And then there was some circumstantial information of how they were killed and the like, only to leave the impressions that we were facing a force that was professional and not some sort of amateur, just local, thugs. And so the deductions, although, would spew toward the commandos in the area because of the rope marks and so on, I never concluded who actually did it.

Q. Unfortunately, General Dallaire, I cannot follow you in that line of thinking.

Another pertinent answer that reflects the infinite possibility that war crimes will be committed because politicians are not capable of creating strategy or understanding military warfare that is bound up in the present moment of any conflict:

General Dallaire: I do, however, remember the frictions that were going on between the military commanders and the political leaders, by the fact that the political leaders were insisting on operating out of Gitarama and they were not providing the commanders with timely information.