U.S. Lawyer Is Barred From Rwanda Tribunal Work
By JOSH KRON
Published: April 27, 2011
KAMPALA, Uganda — An American lawyer who was arrested last year in Rwanda has been barred by the United Nations from working at an international tribunal for Rwanda after refusing to appear in court.
Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda removed Peter Erlinder, a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota, as the defense counsel for a major Rwandan genocide suspect, the tribunal said Wednesday, because Mr. Erlinder had failed to travel to the court, which is based in Tanzania.
Mr. Erlinder said he did not appear because he feared his life would be in danger from the Rwandan government even in Tanzania, nearly 500 miles away.. He was removed from the tribunal last week, with a spokesman for the court calling Mr. Erlinder’s claims an “excuse” and his conduct “unprofessional.”
“He is no longer a counselor in the tribunal here,” said the spokesman, Roland Amoussouga. “He has no standing.”
Mr. Erlinder was arrested last May in Rwanda on charges of denying the country’s 1994 genocide, in which 1 million people were killed, after traveling there to defend an opposition politician.
He was held for three weeks, during which he said he suffered a variety of illnesses and was taken to the hospital four times.
Since he left, Mr. Erlinder has gone on a speaking tour promoting a new collection of evidence on the 1994 genocide. He says that he is a target of the Rwandan government and has even received threats while on tour in the United States.
“I would not be at my best in Arusha,” he said on Wednesday, referring to the Tanzanian city where the tribunal is based.
The United Nations showed support for Mr. Erlinder during his arrest in Rwanda, urging his release, but the tribunal said Wednesday that Mr. Erlinder’s security fears were unwarranted.
“Counsel’s conduct amounts to a failure to act diligently and in good faith and does not demonstrate the highest standards of professional conduct,” judges at the tribunal said in the ruling.
While Mr. Erlinder tried to take part in a trial by video-conference, judges insisted he be physically present in court, the tribunal said, and warned him twice that failure to show could result in sanctions.
“The appeals chamber did not buy any of the argument that he gave,” said the tribunal spokesman, Mr. Amoussouga.
Peter Robinson, a defense lawyer at the tribunal until last year, said he did not share Mr. Erlinder’s fears.
“I never feared for my safety in Arusha,” Mr. Robinson said.
But Chief Charles A. Taku, another lawyer at the tribunal, said he had been the subject of "verbal attacks" from Rwandan authorities.
Defense lawyers at the tribunal protested Mr. Erlinder’s arrest last year, saying that he was being prosecuted specifically for his work in trial at the court, which focused on the downing of a presidential jet in April 1994. Mr. Erlinder has said the evidence he presented in court suggests that members of the current, Tutsi-led Rwandan government — not Hutu extremists — shot down the plane, challenging the conventional narrative of the event that helped set off the genocide.
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