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WHD attorney experiences Rwandan court hearing

By: dmc-admin//November 12, 2007//

WHD attorney experiences Rwandan court hearing

By: dmc-admin//November 12, 2007//

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ImageA convicted mass murderer sits in court awaiting his sentence.

He has confessed to killing 18 people in less than a year and despite suggestions by the prosecution that he killed significantly more people, the prisoner could potentially walk away a free man at the behest of the victims’ families.

The scenario may sound like an excerpt from a bad Hollywood script, but the case is one of many with similar circumstances often heard by a branch of the justice system in Rwanda.

Amy M. Salberg, an attorney at Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, S.C., in Milwaukee, spent 10 days in the African country and had the unexpected and unique privilege of sitting in on a court hearing which stemmed from the 1994 genocide.

“That day provided me with a unique opportunity to glimpse inside the criminal justice system that was set up to deal with those who committed the acts of genocide,” said Salberg, who practices in consumer finance law at WHD, which sponsored her trip.

Established in 2005, the gacaca (ga-cha’-cha) courts were set up specifically to try and sentence perpetrators of the genocide, which resulted in the death of approximately 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.

Although several aspects of the gacaca courts resembled American proceedings, Salberg found the firsthand experience to be both enlightening and intimidating.

“There are more than 100,000 perpetrators and their system can’t handle that,” said Salberg. “They’ve calculated the timing if they were to put all of those people through the regular Rwandan court system it would take about 110 years.”

Though gacaca, which translates to “justice in the grass” in Kinyarwandan, was previously used for local disputes and facilitated by elders, the new system is more formal and modernized.

A panel of nine locally-elected judges presides over the hearings which commence without attorneys, an aspect Salberg found oddly refreshing.

“People just sort of talk off the cuff and there is nobody questioning them,” said Salberg.

“It was fascinating to see both sides just be able to express whatever was on their minds and converse with each other.”

Rare Opportunity

Since the proceedings are lawyer-free, Salberg was particularly touched when one of the widows set to appear at the Oct. 23 hearing, welcomed her presence as an “advocate.”

Though the majority of the community attends local gacaca hearings and local businesses typically close for the sessions, it is rare for outsiders to attend, said Salberg, especially a case heard outside of Kigali.

“She was so happy to have the support of a lawyer and I was really humbled by that, because I’m just an American lawyer and there are a lot of us,” said Salberg.

During the two-hour drive from Kigali to Nyanza, Salberg heard the grisly details about how the woman’s husband and several children were murdered by the man set to be sentenced by the panel.

“The person who had killed them had been incarcerated about 18 months after the murders,” said Salberg. “From that point to this point, his guilt had been determined, but the extent and exact sentence had not been determined.”

Salberg said her presence sparked immediate attention from both the community and the judicial panel, which granted her a seat among the other widows and orphans participating in the session, one of three taking place simultaneously.

Clothed in pink to make him stand out, the prisoner was seated in the middle of a semi-circle as proceedings opened with the prosecution speaking first, and the defense second. Testimony was in Kinyarwanda, but portions were translated for Salberg, who speaks French, the country’s second language.

Salberg said similar to American justice, eyewitness testimony is preferred over hearsay, but often difficult to produce in genocide cases like the one she witnessed.

“One of the criticisms of the gacaca court was sometimes they (widows and orphans) are told by the judges that ‘You don’t have any witnesses so what can we do for you?’” said Salberg. “That’s understandable because you need witnesses in order to incarcerate someone, but widows are saying, ‘We don’t have any because they’ve all been murdered.’

It’s kind of lose-lose in some cases.”

The stark contrast in available witnesses was evidenced by the number of family members on hand for the widows and the prisoner. Salberg said in excess of 80 family members were there on behalf of the prisoner and far fewer for the widows.

“It’s an intimidating thing for the widows sitting there, especially because his family still had a lot of men left, which is not true on the widow’s side,” said Salberg. “As I sat there, the disparity in power was palpable.”

Justice Served

Unlike American justice, which is often measured in years of a prison sentence,

satisfaction for the prosecution in the gacaca court hearing attended by Salberg was measured in remorse.

“The widows were offering to pardon the prisoner of any further incarceration if he would simply tell them where there family members were and repent,” said Salberg.

“Unfortunately, he wouldn’t do that, though he acknowledged to killing 18 people.”

After more than an hour of deliberation, the judicial panel sentenced the prisoner to 30 additional years of incarceration, a punishment which Salberg said the widows felt was fair, especially since the prisoner was in his late 50s and not expected to outlive his sentence.

In talking with several of the widows after the proceeding, Salberg was informed that her presence may have actually influenced the court’s ruling.

“They were happy and apparently my being there and not saying a word was helpful, which again is something unusual for an American attorney,” said Salberg. “I guess it was perceived that ‘America’ was watching. I was glad I didn’t know that ahead of time because I didn’t think of myself as any sort of ambassador and was just glad to be part of the experience.”

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