Rwanda alleges UN tribunal employing genocide suspects News
Rwanda alleges UN tribunal employing genocide suspects

[JURIST] The Rwandan government [official website] Thursday threatened to stop working with the UN-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) [official website; JURIST news archive] because it believes the ICTR employs genocide suspects. Rwanda pointed to the ICTR's pressure on Tanzania to free [ICTR press releases] Callixte Gakwaya, a lawyer accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide [HRW backgrounder], as evidence of the tribunal's alleged corruption.

This is not the first time Rwanda [JURIST news archive] has voiced its dissatisfaction [JURIST report] with the ICTR, which was established by the UN in 1997 to investigate the genocide that left 800,000 dead. Rwandan President Paul Kagame [BBC profile] in June criticized the tribunal as inefficient [JURIST report], noting it has convicted fewer than 40 people since its inception. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Georgia became first US state to ban lynching

On December 20, 1893, Georgia became the first state in the Union to pass a law against lynching, making the act punishable by four years in prison. The statute was not particularly effective—read the text of the 1899 pamphlet Lynch Law in Georgia by anti-lynching activist Ida Wells-Barnett.