Kampala - The UN court trying people suspected of masterminding the 1994 genocide in Rwanda said Saturday it caould not beat the December 2008 deadline to complete its work and appealed to the Security Council for more time. Judges on the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) also told reporters at the sidelines of the Commonwealth summit in Kampala that they were failing to relocate people freed by the tribunal, as these feared to return to Rwanda.
"We were given a 2008 deadline by the Security Council to finish work, but the ability to finish in time is right now a nightmare to the president of the ICTR,"tribunal external relations head Roland Amoussouga said.
"To give an example, there is one case whose decision, written in a well-reasoned way, will take six months and run until 2009."
Flanked by the court president and judge Dennis Byron, Amoussouga said the court's proceedings were so protracted that it was difficult to move swiftly, as in national courts, and "we need time. The ICTR president has sent this message to the Security Council. We have reached a cruising altitude."
The judges at the court based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha were invited to attend the three-day Commonwealth summit in the Ugandan capital.
The court was set up after the genocide that left up to 800,000 people dead at the hands of extremists in the central African state. Suspects on trial are mostly well-place people and top government and military officials.
Amoussouga said that out of 90 people indicted for trial by the court, 76 were arrested. Decisions had been made on 34 cases, of which 29 were found guilty and given sentences ranging from six years to life imprisonment.
He said that six people convicted by the tribunal were serving their sentences in Mali, Benin and Swaziland.
Five were acquitted, two accepted in France and one in Belgium, but the ICTR was still stuck with two others who feared to return home and had not been accepted anywhere in the world.
"Two of those acquitted are with us in Arusha," Amoussouga said. "These are the residual issues the tribunal will leave with the Security Council when we wind up work.
"We have a challenge of the acquitted people and those who have already served their sentences."
