November 2005Reporters Without BordersInternational Secretariat5, rue Geoffroy Marie75009 Paris-FranceTél. (33) 1 44 83 84 84Fax (33) 1 45 23 11 51E-mail : rsf@rsf.orgWeb : www.rsf.org

The arrest of father Guy TheunisAn investigation of the charges,

the legal action and possible reasons

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Belgian Catholic priest and former editor Fr. Guy Theunis has been held in Kigali’s main prison for the past two months for supposedly inciting ethnic hatred and denying the coun-try’s genocide. His defenders say he is really in prison for exposing human rights violations by the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR).

A Reporters Without Borders team visited the country from 30 September to 7 October to investigate the case of the 60-year-old mem-ber of the Missionaries of Africa Society (also known as the White Fathers), who is former editor of the Rwandan magazine Dialogue and lived in Rwanda from 1970 until 1994. The team was able to see him in prison and meet the main prosecution witnesses from his 11 September hearing before a grassroots gacaca court, which on 11 September, when he was declared a prime genocide suspect (a planner or inciter).

Reporters Without Borders also talked to one of his two lawyers and to diplomats, local and foreign journalists, religious offi cials and hu-man rights leaders.

A chance arrest

Theunis took part in a conference on “non-vio-lent communication” in Kinshasa, Democratic Congo, in August, and was then asked by col-leagues to go to Kalemie, in southeastern Con-go, where he led a similar discussion. But sev-eral plane crashes during the summer meant there was a shortage of aircraft, so instead of returning to Kinshasa, he went to Kigali to get a plane back to Belgium.

He got to Kigali late on 5 September and spent the night at the Centre for the Teaching of Af-rican Languages (CELA), where the White Fathers live. The next day, he visited friends around the city and went with the White Fa-thers’ superior in Rwanda, Fr Henri Blanchard, to see new neighbourhoods in Kigali. In the late afternoon, Antoine Mugesera, a former FPR offi cial who used to work on Dialogue and is now an FPR senator, came to CELA to see Theunis and told him he wanted Dialogue and its publishers, ASBL Dialogue (see box) to re-turn to Rwanda.

Theunis reminded him he had not worked for the magazine for nine years but promised to pass on the message to the magazine’s staff in Brussels. The conversation was interrupted by Blanchard, who wanted to drive Theunis to the airport to catch his fl ight to Brussels at 19:50. Theunis checked in his bags, passed through immigration and went to the boarding area. At around 19:00 a hostess called out for “Mr Guy” and Theunis presented himself. He was asked to come with his things to the airport security offi ce, where an arrest warrant for “incitement to genocide” was served on him. Theunis man-aged to phone Blanchard to say he was being held by security offi cials. Around 23:00, he was taken to Remera police station, where he spent a restless night after being roughed up by po-lice. “I couldn’t sleep because of worry and the mosquitos,” he said (1).

He was told on 8 September that he was go-ing to be taken before a court, but was simply taken instead to Kigali’s main prison (PCK or “the 1930”).

Dialogue, a Rwandan-Belgian magazineDialogue was founded in Rwanda in March 1967 by a priest, Jean Massion. Today it prints about 2,000 copies, comes out every two months and describes itself as dealing with “so-cial, economic, political, cultural, religious and other problems of special concern to Rwanda and sees them from a Christian perspective, without being an organ of the Church.”After the genocide and a few months when it did not appear, its staff, most of whom had fl ed the country, relaunched the magazine in Brus-sels, where it has been produced ever since and sent to subscribers in Rwanda and other countries.Sen. Antoine Mugesera worked for Dialogue until 1995, when he resigned, accusing it of printing extracts from the extremist magazine Kangura in its issue no. 182. Since then, he has been fi ghting through offi cial channels to get the magazine returned to Rwanda. Its staff decided it was not possible to return, for se-curity reasons. The FPR senator then seized the magazineʼs publishing fi rm, ASBL, and in April 2004, 10 years after the genocide, a ver-sion of the magazine was launched in Kigali. A second issue appeared in July. Since then, two versions of Dialogue – one in Brussels and one in Kigali, each with exactly the same layout – have been appearing. Their content, however, is different.

(1) Conversation with Reporters Without Borders at Kigali prison on 4 October 2005

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Theunis is being held in reasonable physical conditions by Rwandan standards and wears a pink prisoner’s uniform, has his own cell and is visited daily by the White Fathers, who bring him food. Relations with the other prisoners are helped because he speaks the local lan-guage, Kinyarwanda, fl uently. He spends his day praying, reading and talking with other prisoners. He listens to the radio, where he hears about the international campaign for his release. “I feel a bit like in a parish here,” he says. “A different kind of one, but maybe I’m here because I have a new mission. Anyway, that’s what the other prisoners think,” he told Reporters Without Borders. “I write to my fam-ily each day and have lots of visitors.” (2)

The gacaca court and the charges against him

The Rugenge (Kigali) district gacaca, president over by Judge Raymond Kalisa, began hear-ing the case against Theunis on 11 September. The priest was accompanied by two policemen and about 600 people watched the seven-hour hearing, which featured a dozen prosecution witnesses who claimed Theunis had incited hatred and denied the genocide. The wit-nesses were not living in Rugenge at the time of the offences and most were not even living in Rwanda in April 1994. The only defence wit-ness, whose evidence was not recorded by the court, was Alison DesForges, a special adviser with Human Rights Watch.

Before the hearing began, one prosecution wit-ness, Jean-Damascène Bizimana, handed out a fi le to the nine judges and to senior offi cials present. Theunis, DesForges and foreign jour-nalists present were not allowed to see it.

Several witnesses gave evidence that Theunis had taken part in genocide. One said he had been seen in April 1994 with Rwandan army offi cers who were “looking for people” in the Sainte-Famille parish, in Kigali. But Theunis had left the country before these events took place. One foreign observer recognised one of the witnesses as a communications offi cer from the gacacas department of the justice ministry who did not even know Theunis.

Five prosecution witnesses, who knew each other and some of whom met several times since the arrest of Theunis, played a key part in the hearing.

One of them was Antoine Mugesera, who knew Theunis well from working on Dialogue and the related association of the same name. After leaving Rwanda in 1990, just before the war broke out, he joined the FPR and became a political offi cial in charge of planning. He re-turned to Rwanda after the genocide and is now an FPR senator after heading Ibuka (“Re-member”), a government-sponsored group de-fending survivors of the genocide. In 1995, he strongly opposed Theunis, who was then run-ning Dialogue (3) from Brussels.

He denied attending the hearing to give evi-dence against Theunis and said he only testi-fi ed because Theunis had criticised him in his own evidence (4). He blamed Theunis for pub-lishing extracts from the extremist Hutu paper Kangura before the genocide and continuing to do so afterwards. He said Theunis used the

Two rival versions of Dialogue are produced Two rival versions of Dialogue are produced one in Brussels (left), one in Kigali (right) one in Brussels (left), one in Kigali (right)

Guy Theunis at his gacaca trial on 11 September 2005 Guy Theunis at his gacaca trial on 11 September 2005

(2) Conversation with Reporters Without Borders at Kigali prison on 4 October 2005(3) Mugesera accused Theunis in a letter in spring 1995 of publishing extracts from an extremist Hutu paper, Kan-gura, in a press roundup put out by the Dialogue group. Theunis replied on 14 June, saying why he had printed the extracts. Mugesera said again on 20 August that he disagreed.(4) Conversation with Reporters Without Borders, in Kigali, 3 October 2005.

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Dialogue publishing fi rm ASBL Dialogue to promote genocide. “Theunis summarised in a press roundup the contents of many papers, good and bad, but it was he who chose what to print and he chose to spread genocidal ide-as.” (5)

Another witness, Tom Ndahiro, a former jour-nalist on the government daily Imvaho and now a member of the national human rights com-mission, based his evidence on two books. One was “The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide,” the English edition of a book by Gérard Prunier, of the French National Scien-tifi c Research Institute (CNRS) in Paris, and the other “La nuit rwandaise: l’implication française dans le dernier genocide du siècle” (The Rwandan darkness: France’s involvement in the century’s last genocide), by Jean-Paul Gouteux, known for his criticism of France, its military, the Catholic Church in general and in-ternational human rights groups. Ndahiro said the books proved that Catholic offi cials were involved in the genocide. The Gouteux book accuses Dialogue of publishing “ethno-centric and revisionist material.”

Ndahiro also said Theunis sent to top offi cials of the White Fathers in Rome between April and June 1994 more than a dozen faxes signed by their then-superior in Rwanda, Jef Vleugels, that did not warn the international community strongly enough about the genocide. He said they mentioned “the job” and the “cleansing” by the authorities, terms often used by the anti-Tutsi station Radio-télévision libre des mille col-lines (RTLM) to describe the massacres.

At the end of the hearing, several Rwandan and foreign journalists wanted to see or have a

copy of these faxes, but Ndahiro and the judg-es refused. (6)

The third prosecution witness, Jean-Damas-cène Bizimana, is a former White Fathers semi-narian who studied philosophy and spent two years in Mali before being trained as a theolo-gian in France. He then left the Catholic Church and joined the pro-justice group RCN Justice and Démocratie (founded in October 1994). He also teaches international law at the basic rights research centre at Kigali Free University. He is close to Gouteux and active in groups that accuse the Catholic Church and the White Fathers of being involved in the genocide.

“I have believed since 1990 that Theunis has a racist anti-Tutsi attitude,” he said. “The White Fathers didn’t criticise the abuses of the Hab-yarimana regime, said all those jailed at that time had links with the FPR and so justifi ed the arrest of innocent people.” (7) During the

(5) Conversation with Reporters Without Borders, in Kigali, 3 October 2005.(6) Reporters Without Borders learns that the faxes presented at the hearing were taken from the archives of Dialo-gue in Kigali and given to the judges. Mugesera is currently editor of the new Dialogue magazine, which appeared in Kigali in 2004, and has taken over the Dialogue groupʼs property, including the archives. He denies helping to concoct a case against Theunis, saying that he supposed the prosecutorʼs offi ce had given the faxes to the gacaca. Conversation with Reporters Without Borders, Kigali, 3 October 2005.(7) Conversation with Reporters Without Borders, Kigali, 6 October 2005.

The hate mediaMonths, even years, before the genocide, ex-tremist newspapers had been stirring up ethnic hatred and saying war was the only solution. A dozen publications spouted xenophobic poison each week and accused the Tutsis of being res-ponsible for all the societyʼs ills. Kangura ma-gazine, edited by Hassan Ngeze, was the most extreme. These papers gradually got people to believe that killing all Tutsis was the only “via-ble” answer to the countryʼs problems.Radio-télévision libre des mille collines (RTLM), founded on 8 April 1993, was Rwan-daʼs only privately-owned radio station on the eve of the genocide and had worried people since it began broadcasting. It put out very extreme propaganda and was also very popu-lar. Its editorial line became even more radical after the assassination of Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, in October 1993. Every day, between April and July 1994, “Ra-dio-Télé-la-Mort” (as the station was nickna-med) encouraged, guided and incited govern-ment troops and the Interahamwe militia, even broadcasting names and addresses of people in hiding, many of them journalists. The state-owned Radio Rwanda was handed over to the Rwandan army on 7 April and over the next three months many of its staff put out program-mes very similar to those of RTLM.

Tom Ndahiro Tom Ndahiro

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gacaca hearing, Bizimana said that in the fax-es, Theunis used the language of the RTLM, with the same ideas and same expressions. “This showed solidarity with the perpetrators of the genocide. It wasn’t innocent and Theunis is guilty of bias,” he said. (8)

Another witness was Marie-Immaculée Inga-bire, vice-president of the government’s media supervisory council and formerly a women’s rights leader. She accused Theunis of inciting racial hatred in his press roundup, published by Dialogue, which included extracts from the Hutu extremist paper Kangura (see box). She said he handed out photocopies of the round-up to the public but did not say where, when and how often.

The fi fth key witness was Christian Scherrer, a Swiss teacher at the Hiroshima Peace In-stitute in Japan, who was unknown to all the Rwandans the Reporters Without Borders team spoke to and to Great Lakes region experts. The hearing ended after his evidence. He said he was a specialist in

post-genocide trauma and said “Ndahiro and others have proved to me that Theunis is guilty.” He criticised the Church’s responsibility in the genocide and strongly attacked the evidence of human rights adviser DesForges. (9)

He accused a German White Father, Johan Pristl, of translating Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Kinyarwanda. This charge appears to have been taken from the magazine Golias, which Gouteux writes for. Theunis replied that Pristl’s Kinyarwanda was not good enough to translate an entire book. Scherrer then said that Theunis must have helped him. Reporters Without Bor-ders found no trace of such a translation.

Scherrer told Reporters Without Borders at the end of October that Theunis was a friend of Ferdinand Nahimana, one of the founders of RTLM, and Hassan Ngeze, founder of Kangura and the extremist CDR militias, who were both sentenced to life imprisonment by the Interna-tional Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He said Theunis had also spread the ideology of “Hutu Power” since 1989.

Reporters Without Bordersresponds to these accusations:

Theunis’ presence in Sainte-Famille parish

The evidence of those who said they has seen Theunis in Sainte-Famille parish at the time of the genocide is very vague and contains noth-ing concrete, such as exact places, dates or names. None of the major witnesses have gone back over what must be seen as imaginary evi-dence. Theunis’s name was also never men-tioned at gacaca meetings when information began to be collected. Nobody in the Kigali neighbourhoods where Theunis lived or held mass accused him of being involved in the gen-ocide in any way. He left Rwanda on 13 April 1994, six days after the massacres began.

Incitement to racial hatred in Dialogue magazine

No witness presented evidence that Theunis had incited racial hatred through Dialogue. Theunis was known for his strident views, which might have shocked Rwandans deeply traumatised by the genocide, but no article or public or private statement by him backs up this charge.

As evidence, Bizimana gave Reporters With-out Borders a report of a public debate in 1997 (three years after the genocide) organised by a Belgian newspaper between Theunis, journalist Colette Braeckman and academic Filip Reyn-tjens. Theunis said in the debate that the Tut-sis tended to “spoil things” and that violence had always “come from the same side” in the country’s history. These remarks cannot in any way be seen as denying the genocide or incit-ing racial hatred.

And if, as some witnesses claimed, Dialogue was spreading genocidal and ethnocentric ideas, why was it freely on sale in bookshops in Kigali?

Inclusion of extracts from Kangura in the Dialogue press roundup

Dialogue began doing a weekly roundup of the local Kinyarwanda-language press in 1991 at the request of European embassies in Rwan-da. It gave maximum 10-line summaries of the main articles in all regularly-published papers. About 200 copies of it were distributed to diplo-mats and NGO people in Rwanda and abroad. It did not appear between April and October 1994 and then ceased for good in 1995.

(8) Conversation with Reporters Without Borders, Kigali, 6 October 2005.(9) In an e-mail exchange with Reporters Without Borders, Scherrer said he only spoke to counter her stand.

Christian Scherrer Christian Scherrer

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The roundup men-tioned articles from the extremist press, including Kangura, and aimed to tell a small number of people what was being written in Kinyarwanda. As Theunis explained in a letter to Mug-esera in 1995, “We can’t do our job of informing people by

pretending to ignore some publications. Obvi-ously we don’t share Kangura’s opinions and, as human rights activists, we have campaigned and are still campaigning for it to be banned. But we can’t take a stand on this in the press roundup.”

Like other human rights groups, Report-ers Without Borders subscribed to the press roundup for several years and, as a press free-dom organisation, was very interested in its work. We were able to condemn racist ideas in the Rwandan state media and then privately-owned media from 1991 thanks to this press roundup.

Far from spreading racist ideas, Dialogue was one of the fi rst media outlets to denounce the promotion of racial hatred by some of the Rwandan media. Its issue of July-August 1991 said that “racist or separatist articles, often in-sidious, are regrettable and could make life in the country unbearable. One notorious exam-ple is ‘The 10 Commandments of Bahutu,’ in the December 1990 issue of Kangura. Theunis was the Reporters Without Borders correspondent in Rwanda from 1992 to 1993 and regularly alerted us of excesses in the ex-tremist local media. His knowledge was so great that he founded, shortly before that (with André Sibomana) the Rwanda Journalists As-sociation, one of whose goals was to distin-guish between journalism and the propaganda of some media outlets. Although it did not last, the Association managed to produce a code of conduct for its members that complied with all international and professional standards.

The faxes sent after the genocide began

Reporters Without Borders has obtained copies (in Rwanda and in Belgium) of all 23 faxes sent by Theunis and Vleugels during the genocide, between 7 April and 24 August 1994. They deal mainly with priests killed or in hiding but also

with conditions of life and the massacres.They were sent to the White Fathers headquar-ters in Rome, several provincial missions in Eu-rope, to other religious congregations around the world and to the French Catholic daily pa-per La Croix.

Nothing in them can be seen as incitement to religious hatred or separatism. Theunis and Vleugels tried as best they could to relay the facts as they knew them. On 7 April, they spoke of “massacres and looting” in some parts of Kigali. The next day, Theunis said “barbaric acts” had been committed in the Saint Charles Lwanga de Nyamirambo church in Kigali and said soldiers had killed “wounded Tutsis in their beds.” On 8 April, they said RTLM had begun calling on people to kill and urging them to hunt for Inkotanyi [fi ghters of the Tutsi-domi-nated FPR] hiding among them and tell soldiers where they were.

A fax on 9 April said that “’cleansing’ contin-ues in some parts of Kigali” and then that “the gendarmes have gone, leaving people to do ‘the job.’” The words “cleansing” and “the job” were terms current at the time and were placed in quotes to emphasise the horror of the situa-tion, not to make propaganda. Later, Theunis says Belgians living among Tutsis had not been spared. The fax describes killings and massa-cres by the soldiers. How can Theunis be seri-ously accused of complicity with these killers? He indeed used the words “cleansing” and “the job” in reference to what RTLM said, which is why they were in quotes. This does not means the White Fathers supported or approved in any way what was going on. On the contrary, Theunis and his colleagues were among the fi rst to give details of the massacres.

The The DialogueDialogue press roundup, press roundup, in 1993 in 1993

One of the faxes Theunis One of the faxes Theunis sent to his superiors in Rome in April 1994 sent to his superiors in Rome in April 1994

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The faxes, like the Dialogue press roundup, were for a limited audience and not distributed to Rwandans in general and so cannot in any way have stirred up hatred in the country.

The last fax Theunis sent from Rwanda on 11 April said massacres were continuing in Kigali and that “many people, mainly Tutsis, have been killed.”

“Theunis associated with killers”

The only evidence presented for this was a photo taken three years before the genocide, showing Guy Theunis with Ferdinand Nahima-na, then head of the government information offi ce Orinfor, and Rwandan army offi cers. It fi rst appeared in the book “Rwanda, les médias du génocide” (put out by the French publisher Karthala and Reporters Without Borders) and was taken on 30 May 1991, when Rwandan journalists visited the war zone (10) on a trip or-ganised by Orinfor, which is why its head, Na-himana, was present. Theunis was there as a journalist, along with many other reporters who were not in the photo. It was not a private occa-sion or individual assignment by Theunis. The photo in no way proves that Theunis sympa-thised with RTLM (which was only set up two years later) or with army offi cers later convicted of the 1994 massacres.

Why was Theunis arrested?

Four reasons have been suggested:

He was a secret negotiator for the FDLR.

This theory says he was in Democratic Congo to help mediate in favour of members of the Rwanda Democratic Liberation Forces (FDLR), comprising former genocide perpetrators, ex-Rwandan army soldiers and Hutu refugees. Theunis denied this to Reporters Without Bor-ders, which found no evidence to back up the suggestion.

He is a bargaining chip.

Theunis could be used as a bargaining chip to get hold of former genocide perpetrators living in Belgium or as pressure to end the Belgian ban on the Rwandan airline Silverback Cargo Freighters, which carries mineral ore to Europe. The Belgian authorities have discounted these two motives, which nobody seems to take seri-ously any longer.

Evidence against FPR soldiers in Spain.

Another clue is the case of Spanish priest Fr. Joaquín Vallmajó Sala, who was kidnapped by FPR soldiers on 26 April 1994 in Kageyo (in the northern province of Byumba) and later killed. In February 2005, a legal complaint was fi led by the International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa against 10 top FPR fi gures for killing six missionaries, includ-ing Vallmajó, and three Spanish members of NGOs. Their families and several human rights groups were co-complainants. In early April, the Spanish supreme court said it would hear the case. Some, including the lawyer for the victims’ families, Jordi Palou-Loverdos, think Theunis’ arrest was to prevent him giving evi-dence at the hearing, which is expected in the next few months. But it seems unlikely that Theunis’ absence would be very important. He is not on the list of witnesses due to appear and does not have key information in the case.

A vendetta by those in power.

The most likely reason is a personal political vendetta by a group of regime fi gures who had Theunis arrested to punish him for his religious stands, his criticism of the FPR for human rights violations or simply to settle personal scores.

Some criticise the White Fathers and the Cath-olic Church for being fanatically anti-Tutsi and a spate of articles in the Rwandan press since Theunis’ arrest have accused the Church of be-ing partly responsible for the genocide. One anonymous article written by a top justice min-istry offi cial was sent in late September to the paper Umuseso, which printed only part of it (under the heading “End of White Fathers’ Infl u-ence in Rwanda”), leaving out the most virulent passages, including some accusing the White Fathers still in Rwanda of “segregationism.” Bizimana, the former White Fathers seminar-ian and one of Theunis’ accusers at his gacaca

(10) The photo appeared in the pro-government paper The New Times on 12 September, the day after Theunis ̓ga-caca hearing.

The photo printed in The photo printed in «Rwanda, les médias du génocide» «Rwanda, les médias du génocide»

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hearing, told Reporters Without Borders he had fi led a complaint on 6 September as soon as he heard Theunis was in Rwanda. He refused to say who had told him Theunis had arrived.

Other people, such as FPR activists, have still not got over Theunis’ exposure of the rul-ing party’s human rights abuses. He was one of the promoters of the Rwandan Associa-tion for the Rights of the Individual and Public Freedoms (ADL), which since 1991 has strongly denounced the abuses of both the regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana and the FPR. Three years later, in May 1994, when nobody dared to question the deeds of the FPR, The-unis stressed in a fax to his superiors the “fl a-grant human rights violations” of the FPR. He wrote on 9 June that year that three bishops and 10 priests had been killed by “FPR soldiers assigned to guarding them.”

There were also perhaps personal motives, by those who have known Theunis for many years and see him as a block to their ambitions. His arrest is a godsend to the group trying to win editorial and fi nancial control of the Dialogue group and its magazine and could be revenge and a strong signal to the magazine’s editors in Brussels of its determination to get control.

A dubious legal action

Theunis’ prosecution is full of legal fl aws. The prosecutor’s offi ce has still not stated the charg-es against him, in total violation of the rules of

Rwandan legal procedure. The six-day limit for the accused to be brought before a court has been exceeded and no judge has ordered him to be held in custody. One of his lawyers, Pro-té Mutembe, requested his conditional release on 14 September. The prosecutor’s offi ce has not responded but an offi cial has told him in-formally that a decision “by the authorities” is awaited.

The legal system has no real involvement in the case, apart from issuing the arrest warrant, and all decisions are being made by regime offi cials. Legal offi cials have apparently not been investi-gating Theunis. He had already visited Rwanda in spring 2004 to take part in seminars about reconciliation and spent more than a month there, crossing the border several times to at-tend workshops in eastern Democratic Congo. Nobody challenged his presence in Rwanda. Marie-Immaculée Ingabire, of the national me-dia supervisory council, says unidentifi ed peo-ple told legal offi cials of his presence in the country in 2004, but judges could not make ar-rangements fast enough. This time, she said, Theunis’ name must have been on the list at immigration.

The White FathersThe White Fathers Missionary Society (now called The Missionaries of Africa) was founded in Algeria in 1868 by Mgr Charles Lavigerie, archbishop of Algiers. It has 1,733 missiona-ries of 36 nationalities working in 42 African countries. The Society arrived in Rwanda on 2 February 1900 and about 20 or so missionaries now work there overseeing 133 parishes.“You will speak the local language, eat local food and wear the same clothes as local peo-ple do” are the basic principles of the Societyʼs founder. Apart from preaching, the missiona-ries build clinics and schools, encourage rural development and set up social facilities.

Theunis and human rightsThe Rwandan Association for the Rights of the Individual and Public Freedoms (ADL) was founded on 11 September 1991 in Kigali in res-ponse to numerous human rights violations in the country since the start of the war a year ear-lier. Theunis was one its 79 founder-members, along with Joseph Bonesha, currently Rwan-daʼs ambassador to Belgium, Laurent Nkongo-li, ex-ambassador to Canada, and former FPR cabinet minister Joseph Nsengimana.The ADL very quickly began exposing to the media the violence being committed against civilians. In December 1992, it issued its fi rst report, on abuses by the regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana and by FDR soldiers. Its founder-members came from a range of poli-tical parties and the organisation condemned all violence it learned about. It was the fi rst, for example, to expose “the Bagogwe genoci-de” (of Tutsis in northern Rwanda) in January 1991 and also condemned bloody attacks by the FPR.

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Conclusion and recommendationsBelgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht fi led a formal request on 26 September for the case to be transferred to Belgium under the law of uni-versal jurisdiction. A few days later, his Rwan-dan counterpart, Charles Murigande, said he would “seriously” study the request since Bel-gium had already “showed it was not on the side of the perpetrators of the genocide.” But he said in an interview with the Belgian daily Le Soir on 10 October that the case could not be transferred immediately because legal pro-cedures had to be followed. He said Rwanda wanted to ensure that Theunis “really would be tried in Belgium.” If the case was dismissed in Belgium, he said, then he would be “the last prisoner Rwanda would transfer” in this way.

Two Belgian foreign ministry offi cials returned from Kigali on 16 October and said negotia-tions had been “constructive.” A diplomatic solution to the case is the most likely one even if the Rwandans are dragging their feet on the matter.

Theunis is innocent of the charges and the evidence presented against him before, during and since his gacaca hearing, is baseless. The accusations were almost certainly trumped up at the last minute using material downloaded from the Internet or taken from Golias maga-zine. A handful of people, driven by personal or political motives, hastily concocted a case against him. (10)

Reporters Without Borders therefore once again calls on Rwanda to free Theunis at once. It also urges Belgium and the European Union to make every effort to see he returns to Bel-gium quickly.

(10) Reporters Without Borders learns that prosecutor Emmanuel Rukangira, Tom Ndahiro and Jean-Damascène Bizimana were seen together at a Kigali hotel exchanging documents a few days before the gacaca trial.