The UN Genocide Tribunal in Rwanda has sworn in nine judges selected to deal with war crimes committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a statement said.

The statement, made available at the UN Headquarters in New York on Monday, gave the names of the judges as Florence Arrey, Solomy Bossa, Vagn Joensen, Gberdao Kam, Joseph Masanche and Lee Muthoga.

Others are Seon Park, Mparany Rajohnson, and William Sekule, who were each sworn in to the International Residual Mechanism of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania.

The ICTR was created after the Rwandan genocide, when at least 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed during the three months of blood-letting that followed the death of then president Juvenal Habyarimana.

The president’s plane was brought down over the capital, Kigali.

The UN set up the International Residual Mechanism in December 2010 and mandated it to take over and finish the remaining tasks of the ICTR when it was closed after its mandate expired.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) learnt that the ICTR branch of the mechanism would begin functioning on July 1 with a mandate to conclude its work by the end of 2014.

The statement quoted  the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Judge Theodor Meron, as saying that the establishment of the mechanism was of vital importance to the continued protection of the rights of victims and witnesses. (NAN)

-Vanguard

Posted by admin on May 8 2012. Filed under Africa & World Politics, United Nations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry