The General's Trial: The Dallaire Boycott -- 20 November 2006

The General's Trial: The Dallaire Boycott -- 20 November 2006

[Here's the opening of Canadian UN General Roméo Dallaire's testimony in the Military II trial before the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. This transcript is fraught with procedural backs and forths, but the upshot of the whole thing is that the court has ordered that the Defense can only cross-examine this Canadian collaborator with Paul Kagame and his RPF for a half-day per Defendant--with four Defendants, that a full two days. Wow! Chris Black, our General's once and future attorney, figures he needs fifteen days just to cover all the material in Dallaire's squishy, ever-changing and by now threadbare story that is pertinent to General Ndindiliyimana's case. {It's quite telling to note the language Dallaire continues to use: he's all about Tutsi victims of "Hutu Power' hardliners and extremists, and highly disciplined RPF cadres and pro-RPF moderates.} So the General stayed in his cell and told Chris he should probably find a more promising 'accused' to defend. But Chris is way too invested in this case to let his client's refusal to take part in such a cynical farce keep him from getting in a good verbal boot or two or two hundred thousand. As I said, it may not read like an LA Law script, but for wonks of the new Victims' Justice, this grotesque is an absolute MUST READ. Even Dallaire's drug and alcohol demented and syntactically (not to mention historically) incoherent version of the events is chock full of savory morcels of HRsters' narrative sautéed in 100 proof bad faith. --mc]

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THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA

CASE NO.: ICTR-00-56-T THE PROSECUTOR
CHAMBER II OF THE TRIBUNAL
v.
AUGUSTIN NDINDILIYIMANA
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER NZUWONEMEYE
INNOCENT SAGAHUTU
AUGUSTIN BIZIMUNGU

MONDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2006 -- 1310H

(CONTINUED TRIAL)

Before the Judges:
Joseph Asoka de Silva, Presiding
Taghrid Hikmet
Seon Ki Park

For the Registry:
Mr. Roger Noël Kouambo (Canada)
Mr. Issa Toure
Mr. Abraham Koshopa

For the Prosecution:
Mr. Ciré Aly Bâ
Mr. Segun Jegede
Mr. Moussa Sefon
Mr. Abubacarr Tambadou
Ms. Felistas Mushi

For the Accused Augustin Ndindiliyimana:
Mr. Christopher Black

For the Accused François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye:
Mr. Charles Taku
Mr. Hamuli Rety

For the Accused Innocent Sagahutu:
Mr. Fabien Segatwa
Mr. Seydou Doumbia

For the Accused Augustin Bizimungu:
Mr. Ronnie MacDonald

Court Reporters:
Ms. Kirstin McLean
Ms. Leslie Todd
Ms. Sithembiso Moyo
Ms. Eleanor Bastian


WITNESS

For the Prosecution:
ROMÉO DALLAIRE

Examination-in-chief by Mr. Bâ



P R O C E E D I N G S



MR. PRESIDENT:
Good afternoon (inaudible).

Registrar, if you could call the case.


MR. TOURE:
Thank you, Mr. President.

Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, composed of Judge Joseph Asoka de Silva, presiding, Judge Taghrid Hikmet, and Judge Seon Ki Park, is now sitting today, Monday 20 November 2006, for the continuation of the trial in the matter of the Prosecutor versus Augustin Bizimungu, Augustin Ndindiliyimana, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and Innocent Sagahutu, case number ICTR-00-56-T.

I thank you, Mr. President.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Thank you.

Mr. Prosecutor, could you kindly enter the appearances, please?


MR. BÂ:
I thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, Your Honours, the Office of the Prosecutor is represented this morning by Mr. Mussa, trial attorney; Mr. Segun Jegede, trial attorney; Mrs. Felistas Mushi, assistant trial attorney; Madams Faria Rekkas and Anne Bodley, case managers; we have our two legal interns; and Mr. Adamou Allagouma, investigator. My name is Ciré Bâ; I am senior trial attorney. I thank you.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Thank you. The Defence, please?


MR. MACDONALD:
Good morning, Your Honours. At this point in time -- I want to introduce part of my team and will ask you to -- for your authorisation so I could get on record the very short statement, given the absence of my client, as you would notice. So my assistant -- legal assistant, Etienne Mutabazi, and intern, Sarah Bowghanmi. Ronnie MacDonald for General Bizimungu.


MR. PRESIDENT:
(Microphone not activated)


MR. BLACK:
Yes, I'd like the -- my client is also not here, and I would like permission to state the reasons why as well.


MR. TAKU:
May it please Your Honours, I am chief counsel Taku for the Accused, François Nzuwonemeye. With me today is Haumli Rety, co-counsel, and my legal assistant is Mr. Tharcisse Gatarama.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. Segatwa?


MR. SEGATWA:
Good morning -- or, good afternoon, Mr. President, good afternoon, Your Honours. My client is also absent. I want to give the reasons for his absence. My team comprises myself, lead counsel, Seydou Doumbia, co-counsel, and Mathieu Sahinkuye, legal assistant. I thank you, Mr. President.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Thank you.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, I notice that we will have four statements. Time is against us and we are eating into that time. Would it not be possible for the Defence to organise themselves so as to make just one statement? Because I presume that the reasons to be put forward by the various Defence counsel are more or less similar.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. MacDonald?


MR. MACDONALD:
I don't -- I don't think so, Your Honour. We -- there are four accused; I think we should speak for themselves.

General Bizimungu has chosen not to attend this part of the procedures on the grounds that, primo, you've deprived him of his right to confront, face-to-face, his accuser, Roméo Dallaire, and secondo, by applying rigid time constraints in preference to less restrictive methods of control over Witness Dallaire's cross-examination. You have subjugated General Bizimungu's right to a fair trial to political and economic pressures imposed upon you by the United Nations Security Council through the completion strategy.

Moreover, through this Court's recent rulings, namely the decision of October the 20th on reconsideration of the initial ruling of September the 15th, in which ruling you will recall you had denied the Prosecutor's motion to have General Dallaire testify by video conference, well, that was taken away from us, and also, based on your decision of November the 3rd on rescheduling order, all of which clearly illustrates this Court's priorities in accommodating Witness Dallaire's agenda over my client's undeniable right to a fair trial.

From these illustrations, one could conclude to this Court's undefendable abdication of its moral as well as judicial responsibilities in ensuring my client a fair trial. General Bizimungu is not getting a fair trial in this Chamber. For these reasons alone I entirely support his actions. Now, by severely restricting all right to cross-examination, Your Honour, you are preventing me from providing effective assistant to my client. Therefore, General Bizimungu has temporarily released myself and Maître St-Laurent under obligations as co and lead counsel for his defence.

And I would like to put on record, Your Honour, I have a statement from General Bizimungu, a 12-paragraph statement, where he --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, you have summarised his intentions so we can accept this document.


MR. MACDONALD:
Well, I will insist on having this read. I know that you have very rigid time preoccupations, Your Honours, but I think that this man should be entitled to speak on record. But if you would allow me, it should take me maybe five minutes. I will read it in French, and --


MR. PRESIDENT:
But I can't understand your position. You say that you are not permitted to speak on his behalf and then you are reading his statement.


MR. MACDONALD:
No, I'm not -- well, in this letter, Your Honour -- it's dated November the 20th, 2006. And I'll just refer you to paragraph 12, which says -- and I will have to read it in French: "Through this letter, I wish to notify you that none of my counsel has the powers to represent me in the hearing regarding Dallaire's testimony." (Microphones overlapping)... letter, reasons why he knows that he's not getting a fair trial before this Chamber. And this last illustration, this Dallaire saga is the clearest illustration that we've had here in the last two years, for the reasons I've explained.

So we can't work -- I can't work in these conditions, and therefore under my professional code of conduct -- I will refer to section 4 of this Tribunal's code of professional conduct which states that: "Counsel must advise and represent their client until the client duly terminates counsel's position or counsel is otherwise withdrawn, with the consent of the Tribunal." Now, again, if you could give this to Mr. Registrar, I would like to put this on record, sir.

I'm not in a position, Your Honour, to state before this Court that my mandate has been revoked, but definitely suspended. And we've researched this question throughout the rules and statutes and jurisprudence, and it seems that there are no differences between a revocation and a suspension of a mandate. So my position at this point is my mandate is suspended for the time being.

Just one other thing, Your Honour: I've referred to section 4 of the -- this Court's code of professional conduct. I also have, in my home province of Quebec, which we call (French spoken), and I have the French wording of that section which is 3.02.09, and says the following: "Counsel must stop representing the client at the request of the latter."

So I'm caught in a situation, sir -- my client, whom I've represented in the last year and a half, two years, he's asking me -- he's ordering me not to represent him again with respect to the testimony of Witness Dallaire.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel, I think you are trying to give the impression that this Court has to be controlled by the Accused. When they suspend your appearance, we have to stop proceedings. And when he reopens, we have to go on? Is that what you are saying? Anyway, you have said what you have to say.

Counsel Black, do you want to say what you have to say?


MR. MACDONALD:
Well, I have said partly what I have to say. I am suspecting that you -- you have your prerogatives, Your Honour. I'm not sure what you're going to do, but I have mine.


MR. PRESIDENT:
I will do what I am permitted to do.


MR. MACDONALD:
Well, sir.


MR. BLACK:
Yes, sir. And to answer your question, no, we're not asking you to suspend these proceedings; you can proceed with the proceedings as you see fit. We're not asking you to delay the trial in any way. That's not our purpose.

I have a statement also -- instructions from my client which I can read to you. It's not very long. I can read in one minute. It's in French and English; I will read it in English. It's addressed to me, but I'm instructed to read it to you as the reasons why General Ndindiliyimana is not here.

"I wish to remind you that on many occasions I have drawn your attention -- kind attention to the fact that I was more and more convinced that I would not get a fair and just trial before this Tribunal. Many decisions taken by the Trial Judges in the instant case prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my concern is well-founded. It is particularly so in the unfair and highly biased decisions against my Defence taken on 20 October 2006 and 3rd November 2006 in relation to the forthcoming testimony of General Roméo Dallaire. The conditions imposed for his testimony constitute an unacceptable limitation of my right to a fair trial, and it is a clear denial of justice.

"A free and independent deposition by a high-level official with whom I worked", that is General Dallaire, "without ever incurring a single reproach from him or his collaborators will give him a forum to tell the Trial Chamber and the world who were the real actors in the Rwandan tragedy. It is only under this latter condition that General Dallaire would very probably tell the truth and avoid reproducing manipulated theories.

"In the letter I wrote to General Dallaire on 12th February 2003, a copy which I ask you to file with the Court, along with this statement, I reminded him that immediately after the attack against the aircraft carrying President Habyarimana, I personally invited him to come and participate with the Rwandan government force high command in handling the crisis. Thus, Roméo Dallaire participated in all the meetings during which decisions were taken."


MR. BÂ:
Objection, Mr. President. Objection. Counsel is making submissions -- he is giving evidence from the bar. He is testifying to events regarding which he can only testify if he decides to give evidence or if he decides to cross-examine General Dallaire.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel, I think --


MR. BLACK:
Well, I'm not going -- that's the last statement of that nature, sir. "It is therefore incomprehensible and even unacceptable that this person, who could enlighten the Judges and the world on who did what in the Rwandan tragedy and on who truly carries responsibility for what happened, be manipulated and utilised to testify against an innocent person, as I am. Worse than that, the Judges are depriving me of the right to confront this man, face-to-face, in order to dismantle his lies and have ample time to confront him. The testimony of the widows of Ngulinzira and Kavaruganda call upon the consciences of all who heard them and plead for my direct confrontation of General Dallaire.

"It is true that the absence of transparency in the Rwanda file before this Tribunal is not only linked to the testimony of General Dallaire. There are many more situations where transparency had been denied, to the extent of imposing drastic limitations on contradictory debates. All along in our trial, the Trial Chamber Judges have not hidden their bias in favour of the Prosecutor. They have systematically denied to the Defence their right to appeal against their unjust and inequitable decisions" --


MR. PRESIDENT:
So he's speaking about all the trials, not only this one?


MR. BLACK:
No, he is speaking about your decisions in this trial. "All requests for certification of appeal have been systematically denied. Worse than that, the Presiding Judge does not want to entertain any debate on the count of genocide of which I am accused, under the pretext that judicial notice of genocide has been taken in another proceeding.

"Regarding General Dallaire himself, I automatically contest his testimony because a conflict exists between him and I. In fact, I lodged a complaint against him before the Belgian courts.

"Taking all this into account, I consider that my participation and my representation in this trial, when General Dallaire will be testifying, would be equivalent to supporting this mockery of justice, and an acceptance of the serious violation of my fundamental rights to a fair and equitable defence. It is the reason why I have not -- I have decided not to attend General Dallaire's testimony.

"In addition to that, I formally demand that after" -- I have something to ask you. "I formally demand that you inform the Trial Chamber that you do not have any longer my mandate to represent me in these proceedings, as long as the Court sits to hear General Dallaire's testimony by video link. These are unacceptable conditions and appear in deliberate violation of my basic rights."

Now, before I continue, Judge, I would like to ask if -- I take it that the Court maintains its decision of last week -- of the weekend, of Friday, rejecting our appeals? But before --


MR. PRESIDENT:
What do you mean by maintaining a decision? Once a decision is given, that stands.


MR. BLACK:
Yeah, okay. Well, then, just for the record, because I think I have to do this for myself and for the general, I would just like to put on the record what I would be cross-examining General Dallaire on, just briefly, as an offer of proof.

I would be cross-examining -- I would like to cross-examine him on his appreciation of the capacity and condition of the gendarmerie, disposition of its resources, its men, its joint patrols with the UN, its participation in Operation Clean Corridor, its actions in the swearing-in ceremonies, and that would, I believe, take me three days.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, this procedure is improper. He cannot give a guideline of his cross-examination, even when the cross-examination has not yet taken place or started.


MR. BLACK:
Under American law I'm required to do so, and under the British law I'm required to do so. I'm sorry, Mr. Bâ, but those -- that's required.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, Counsel, I think we have already given a decision on the matter. So therefore there is no need to go into all this now. Because you are eating into this precious time that we have allocated for testimony of this witness.


MR. BLACK:
Well, my client was sitting --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Counsel, one more thing I will tell you --


MR. BLACK:
Yes.


MR. PRESIDENT:
-- all the time during the testimonies of other witnesses, you have been saying that, "Well, I had a special relationship with Dallaire and I would welcome his testimony." Now when he is permitted to come here, you say you don't want him. What is this? And you say that we are not fair when we call him.


MR. BLACK:
If you would let me finish you will understand why I say that. I need three days to do what I just listed.

And I need one day to cross-examine -- just a minute, Mr. Bâ, Mr. Bâ, would you stop and sit down --


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President -- Mr. Black, it is not the American law that applies before this Trial Chamber. Tell the Court the rule in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence which allows you to do what you are doing, namely to give an outline of your cross-examination, even though that cross-examination has not yet taken place. This Tribunal is not governed by American law. It is only when the rules here are silent on a given issue that we can refer to the general principles of law and the other legal systems.


MR. BLACK:
The President just asked me why I was saying this; I am explaining, Mr. Bâ.


MR. PRESIDENT:
We have given you a time frame, so you are to work within that.


MR. BLACK:
I'm sorry, sir, I have to explain to you why I can't.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, this is not the time for you to explain. You can register your protest at the time when you start the cross-examination. Are you first appearing today? That is the purpose of your getting up? You are now dealing with other things.


MR. BLACK:
I have -- I have instructions to do this. If you're not going to allow me to make submissions, I would like to know that. I need to finish these submissions.


MR. PRESIDENT:
I am not here to give any explanations to anybody. I will run this Court the way I want according to the rules.


MR. BLACK:
I know that, but I need to know, am I going to be able to finish these submissions which I am instructed to make?


MR. PRESIDENT:
(Microphones overlapping)... already said that you are going to appeal, so what is -- what is there for us --


MR. BLACK:
Well, if you'd just be patient, sir. I have limited instructions to appear today for this limited purpose, and if I can just finish.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yeah, okay.


MR. BLACK:
Thank you. I also intend to cross-examine him on his meeting with Jean Pierre and the so-called genocide fax and the involvement of the British Army in fabricating that fax.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, Counsel, I think this is highly irrelevant. You can --


MR. BLACK:
That would take me one day.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, I -- you can cross-examine him on all the relevant facts that he's going to speak to, or even other facts that he has not spoken to in this Court.


MR. BLACK:
But I can't -- I would need to examine his role in the death of Agathe; it would take me one day. The death of the Belgians; one day.


MR. PRESIDENT:
That will give Agathe her life back, when you cross-examine him for one day?


MR. BLACK:
His involvement with assisting the RPF in its offensive and shooting down the plane; five days. Authentication of all the documents before us that need to be authenticated (microphone not activated) --


THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER:
Microphone, sir.


MR. BLACK:
I have a total of 15 days' questions here, which are essential. His involvement in the death of Agathe, the death of all the VIPs under UN protection, his meetings with my client, his meetings with the army officers on the 6th, 7th, and 8th. It would take me 15 days, at a minimum, to properly cross-examine Dallaire. So one day, I can't do it, I can't even begin to do it, and I have no intention of doing it.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Thank you.


MR. BLACK:
So my final instructions, sir, is this: I am instructed to request for the recusal of yourself and Judge Park because of your attitude in this trial throughout, your failure to -- in fact, your rejection of all our motions, your failure to sustain or deny objections when we make them, you fail to give reasons for these reasons -- for these decisions, the continued limitation of our rights to cross-examine various witnesses, your assistance to witnesses when they're in trouble for the Prosecution to help them, condemn the clients, your expressed attitude and Judge Park's expressed physical attitude is un -- to my client and me gives us the impression of at least an apprehension of bias. And we therefore ask that you consider recusing yourself. Judge Hikmet has not displayed the same amount of bias, in our view, at this point, so we are not asking for Judge Hikmet to recuse herself.

Failing that, I am instructed finally to ask that if you decide not to recuse yourselves, and not consider this motion, that you again consider transferring General Ndindiliyimana's trial to a jurisdiction where he can get a fair trial; anywhere except Rwanda. He's willing to go to Germany, Belgium, Canada, United States, any country in the world except Rwanda. And it's quite clear, now, that this -- the Security Council has set up a Tribunal whose goal is to protect the UN, because there's no intention of allowing us to explore the role of one of the principal actors in the war, in the tragedy, the UN itself, they have no intention of allowing us to explore that. And the world needs to know what the UN did in Rwanda and why these things happened.

So, I'm sorry, sir, that I'm instructed to suspend -- in fact, I am suspended as of now. That's my last instruction.

One other thing -- I don't want to be a sensationalist, because I am always accused of being that. But yesterday I was visited by someone who made a direct threat against me and my client's life. And I cannot work under these conditions. I was told that I'm a dead man and so is my client, that my client is no longer safe in the UNDF -- and you can laugh if you want --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, Counsel, it's not the first time I am hearing this.


MR. BLACK:
I don't think it's a laughing matter when somebody threatens to kill me, and you better goddamn well listen.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, Counsel, it is your turn to listen.


MR. BLACK:
Then you stop -- you protect me, because I am not staying here when somebody is trying to assassinate me.


MR. PRESIDENT:
If you have any complaint, you go and make your complaint to the appropriate authority.


MR. BLACK:
(Microphones overlapping)... don't -- please don't laugh at me.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Please -- please sit down.


MR. BLACK:
I will sit down, sir, but please don't laugh at me.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Please, show your conduct. You are trying to make this Court a mockery.


MR. BLACK:
No, sir, you have done this yourself.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Please take your seat; you have said what you are going to say.


MR. BLACK:
I am instructed to -- one thing, I don't want to fight with you anymore.


MR. PRESIDENT:
I am not here to fight. You are now just using -- using this Court for another agenda.


MR. BLACK:
No, I am not, sir.


MR. PRESIDENT:
That you have demonstrated to this Court now.


MR. BLACK:
You are not taking my -- what I just told you -- seriously? Please don't laugh at that because it was serious, and I take it seriously. I'm sorry I got angry, but when somebody says that to me last night -- I take it very seriously. And it was a member of the police here.

So, my instructions, sir -- and I don't want to fight -- I don't know what you're going to do. But my instructions are to leave the courtroom because I don't represent anybody here. I don't know if you're going to order me to stay or what, but I don't represent anybody, and my instructions are to leave.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. Black, you must know that you can't leave the courtroom like that; you are assigned by the registrar to do a job of work, not to --


MR. BLACK:
I have no work, sir. I am suspended. I can't do anything here. I'm just a civilian right now. I have no role.

We're not asking you to delay the trial, we're not just taking part. I have no function here whatsoever; nor does Mr. MacDonald. If you order me to stay, I'm staying as just a civilian. I'm not a lawyer here.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. Segatwa?


MR. SEGATWA:
Obliged, Your Honour. Obviously my task is a difficult one, because after this incident I don't know whether you'll have time to listen to me, but I will crave your indulgence, Your Honour.

My client, Captain Innocent Sagahutu, has not appeared today, at this session. While demonstrating his profound respect for your Court, he would like that his absence be viewed and understood as a reflection of the deep concern that he is experiencing at this point in time; concern which is heightened or compounded by your decision of the 3rd and the 18th of November 2006, denying endlessly the motion filed by the Defence.

Innocent Sagahutu's Defence team is of the view that there was a misunderstanding between your Court and the Defence team, and would like to take this opportunity to seek clarification of the ruling or the opinion of the Chamber, that is, of your Court. Article 19 sub (1) of the statute of the Tribunal provides as follows: "The Trial Chamber shall ensure that the trial is fair and speedy; and ensures that the proceedings continue in conformity with the Rules of procedure and evidence; that the rights of the Accused are fully observed; and the victims and witnesses being duly protected."

While seeking of your distinguished Court adequate time to enable it -- to enable him to defend himself against the serious charges brought against him by the Prosecutor, and which are to be brought before your Court by General Dallaire, at the time the commanding officer of the UN forces, namely, the UNAMIR deployed in Rwanda in 1994, which is nothing but the universally-recognised right of any accused, namely to defend himself under circumstances that are deemed acceptable, respect for the rights of the defence is the ultimate raison d'être of the Court. It is similarly the raison d'être of the Defence.

In other circumstances the Court has shown that it is receptive to the requests of the Defence, which was seeking suitable time for purposes of cross-examination, and often adequate time had been allotted by the Court for that purpose, for -- in the case of witnesses that are of not such crucial importance as General Dallaire, who, quite rightly, is considered as a crucial eyewitness of the events that resulted in the creation of this Tribunal.

Innocent Sagahutu's Defence team would seek clarification by this Chamber of his decision of the 3rd of November 2006, by which decision the Court said it would be prepared to allow additional time to the parties, depending on the circumstances. The Defence does not intend to engage in a defence that is fraught with uncertainty. Because with the scheduling having been set by the Judges, in other words, from the 20th to the 24th of November, and from the 5th to the 8th of December 2006, in our opinion not much (unintelligible) of manoeuvre is available, that is, for allocating additional time, except to pick from the time allotted to some others and to allot such time to the others. Whereas the main purpose of the challenge is on that scheduling, which does not take into account a full and unfettered exercise of the rights of the Defence. Innocent Sagahutu's Defence team notes that there is time for the Prosecution, which is always allotted the time that it requires, or asks for, whereas there is not enough time for the Defence.

Mr. President, you would say that Innocent Sagahutu's Defence team usually doesn't have enough time for purposes of cross-examination. But the reason for that is that those who address the Court before it do cover the main issues that it needs to address in the course of its cross-examination, and if it were not in a position to do so, that would be -- that would undermine the interests of Innocent Sagahutu, unless, in the final analysis, the Chamber would decide that there be a severance in his case. And in that respect, I now wish to make a concrete proposal -- and please don't be frustrated, Mr. President. It is not intended to challenge or question your ruling. But in the initial proposals that were contained in the motion filed by the Prosecutor, the Prosecutor was asking that Mr. Dallaire testify in January and February 2007, and that schedule seemed to fit in or was approved by counsel for General Dallaire, as well as that of the Defence.

Mr. President, Your Honours, let me conclude by saying all we seek is a bit of understanding in compliance with strict observance of the rights of the Defence. I have no doubt at all that that is within your jurisdiction, your authority.

I am grateful to you, Your Honour, Mr. President, for your kind attention.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Counsel, I think with regard to the time allocation, we have not gone -- this is not our innovation. We have gone according to the Appeals Chambers, where they have given specified times for cross-examination. So if the -- and when -- you, as lawyers, you most know how to act within the time given to you. When you go for an exam, examination will say only three hours, you have to answer the paper. And you know how to manage your time within the three hours, and you have already passed the exams in those restricted hours. So I can't understand why you need unlimited time to cross-examine, unless you want to go into (unintelligible). If you are a good lawyer you must know how to manage the time that is given to you.

Anyway, now that we have listened to your -- sorry. Sorry, Mr. Taku.


MR. TAKU:
May it please Your Lordships. As you will observe, my client is here today. His presence here today, like in the past, must not in any way -- or, must not be construed in any way to say that he supports the scheduling order. Indeed, we objected, and objected very vehemently. And Your Lordships evaluated the reasons for objections and nevertheless ruled the way you did. And as you observed, some of the issues raised when we objected are coming out very, very clearly in your own eyes, and that explains why we have been very, very silent when this matter arose.

That said, Your Honours, the issues raised about the potential for a violation of the fundamental rights of the Defence of a fair trial by my colleagues in regard to their clients, I think they are very, very fundamental issues -- the very foundation on which all -- that this system of justice is built. In fact, that goes to the heart of the notion of the rule of law.

And all I can say, Your Honours, is that you should take it very, very seriously. Especially as -- as I think, (unintelligible) of mine, when you said that you were minded to grant more time if need be. I think it was an obvious issue, Your Honours, at the beginning of this trial for Your Honours to give a clear indication that if such further time were to be given, when would that be possible? Because the element of certainty in the defence of a client is very, very important. That is all I can say.

You are very aware that my client has been the victim of violations in the past with counsel, that he didn't have counsel of his choice. But then he always came here to show the respect that he has for this Court. So I ask you to exercise a bit of patience and (unintelligible) Your Honours to accommodate some of the issues -- some with regard to time. And I say so in very (unintelligible) because we are talking about a situation in Rwanda where people died, and serious allegations have been placed on others. And we want the possibility to defend themselves adequately at this point in time. Thank you, Your Honours.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Thank you, Mr. Counsel. I think what you have said is something reasonable, because we have not even listened to this particular witness. Once the witness gives evidence, we can evaluate what time that should be given, or whether time should be extended. I think in that way I am thankful to you for raising that.

Mr. Segatwa, you have not mentioned anything about your appearance today. Are you appearing for the Accused? Mandate, with regard to the mandate -- have you got a mandate to appear for your client?



MR. SEGATWA:
Obliged, Your Honour. I have received mandate, which is subject to some conditions. We've asked that the Court clarify that portion of its ruling when it says that it is prepared to provide additional time -- to allow additional time, depending on the circumstances. Is that supposed to mean that in the event of cross-examination being conducted by parties, and such parties are not in a position to conclude the said cross-examination, will the Bench be prepared to provide it with additional time that it may seek, or it may just deny it that opportunity to cross-examination? Because we have two half days for each team, and we are the very last and we may have just half days. And there are only nine half days.

Actually, my client is asking that you specify -- clarify, so that we don't start the cross-examination in circumstances of absolute uncertainty, where we don't have enough time or whether we won't have time at all, and if we don't have enough time we will prepare ourselves accordingly.

For sure, Your Honour, my client hasn't asked me to leave this courtroom. Thank you.


MR. BLACK:
Mr. President, may I have permission to withdraw?


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, Counsel --


MR. BLACK:
I serve no purpose here, I have no mandate, I am nothing here at all. We are not objecting to you proceeding in absentia, you have the right under the rules to do so.


MR. PRESIDENT:
We will make a ruling on that. First we have to do other things. We will continue later.

Please, registrar, please inform the three Accused that their presence is required by the Tribunal under Rule 82 of the Rules of Evidence and Procedure, and report to this Chamber immediately. We will be -- we will take -- consider the submissions made by the Defence and we will adjourn for five minutes and come back.


(Court recessed at 1358H)

(1535H)


MR. PRESIDENT:
The statement of the Chamber, 20th November 2006: During this session Defence counsel raised the issue of unfairness of the Chamber's position with regard to the conduct of the video link testimony of the witness, Roméo Dallaire. Counsel for Ndindiliyimana went further to accuse the Chamber of bias and pointed specifically to the Presiding Judge and Judge Park. For the last time, the Chamber wishes to remind counsel of their duty to conduct themselves in a respectful manner when addressing the Court. Any issue relevant to the business of the Court may be raised, provided that this is done in full compliance with the relevant rules and regulations governing this Tribunal. Counsel must in this regard abide by any Chamber's ruling, whether they agree with it or not. The only challenge to the Chamber's ruling should be by resort to the appropriate remedies available pursuant to the rules. The Chamber has already warned Counsel Black for his inappropriate behaviour towards the Bench and notes that, despite repeated warnings, counsel persists in his offensive behaviour. His accusation of bias directed to the Bench without following the proper procedure for disqualification, yelling at the Presiding Judge during the proceedings and refusing on several occasions to obey the Judge's orders will no longer be tolerated. Counsel Black has now exhausted the Chamber's patience. The Chamber is ready to make immediate use of Rule 46 of the rules by refusing audience to counsel and instructing the registrar to strike him off the list of counsel eligible to practice before the Tribunal should counsel persist in his offensive conduct. This statement equally applies to the conduct of all counsel in these proceedings.

Registrar, have you contacted the missing Accused?


MR. TOURE:
Thank you, Mr. President. In accordance with the instructions that you gave, the accused persons concerned were notified that their presence at the proceedings is required. The answer they gave is clear: They refuse to attend these proceedings.

I thank you.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Thank you. In view of the refusal of the Accused, the Chamber instructs the Registrar to assign Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Black to represent the interests of the Accused, Bizimungu and Ndindiliyimana, respectively, pursuant to Rule 45 of the rules.


MR. MACDONALD:
If I may add a comment, Your Honour. The problem we have with that is if you read correctly section 45, before I could be sanctioned under either 45 or 46, I have to sign a written undertaking -- that's quite clear -- and my position at this particular point, and it is not in defiance of your judgment at all, but it is in the rules, 45 specifically states that if you are going to sanction me, I have to have given a written undertaking. And for reasons I mentioned earlier, Mr. President, I cannot -- I cannot provide my client professional services if the Court grants me one day to cross-examine this witness, Roméo Dallaire. It is impossible. And we've dealt with this extensively. You know my position. So my proposition, and I wouldn't want this Court to see this as any kind of leverage, but my proposition right now is I'm ready to sign this undertaking as long as I get guarantees that I'm going to have sufficient time to cross-examine Dallaire, or else I can't. And I'm in an impossible position; I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I have no mandate from my client.

I respect your decision, Your Honour, but you have to see it on my side also. And 45 gives me an opening or an option. If I'm ready to be sanctioned by you, sir, I have to sign this undertaking, and I can't -- again, I can't do it unless I have guarantees. And don't see it as leverage or anything else. I'm just asking this Court to reconsider. And if I could just add one thing: You've cited Perlick this morning. With all due respect, Your Honour, Perlick does not rob you from your common sense. Perlick is a decision from the Court of Appeal that applied in that particular case where the Court recognised the fact that the first instance case had discretion to do it. But in this case, we have the most important witness. You have to use your discretion. And, again, Perlick did not rob you from that discretion, Your Honour. And there is no reason why Dallaire shouldn't be recalled here in February or March. We've -- I think we've dealt in a, I think I could use the term, speedy manner in this particular case compared to other cases. Yes, we've cross-examined witnesses in certain cases for two, three, four days when it was needed, but you will recall the last witness that was here, Madam Kavaruganda, I haven't cross-examined her for more than two hours. So I don't think we exaggerate, Your Honour, by stating that reconsideration should be an option by this Court.


MR. BLACK:
If I may speak, Mr. President. I am also in a very difficult position because my instructions are clear. If you, as you've done, redesignate me or reimpose me on my client, my client will fire me tomorrow. I will no longer be counsel no matter what you do. So what am I supposed to do? If you insist that you now say I'm imposed under that rule as standby counsel -- just another phrase you want to use -- I will be terminated tomorrow, because that's what happened the last time. And, again, if you -- if you apply that rule, which you could do, how -- what does that do with my instructions? My instructions from this client are to do nothing and not to act as counsel. So I have a conflict of ethics, and my first duty is to the client. I have to advise you that I don't want to force you to do something unpleasant; I don't want to have something unpleasant happen to me, but never in my life have I gone against my client's instructions. If you would like during this period to impose some other counsel who is willing to accept that position -- and there are counsel like David Hooper and others who have just been imposed on Dr. Seselj at the ICTY against (inaudible) -- as standby counsel, then you could do that. But if you impose me, my client will terminate my services completely tomorrow. So I have to tell you that if you order me to sit here in court, I will. But I cannot act; I can't. So if you want to get rid of me one way or the other, I guess that's what is going to happen.


MR. SEGATWA:
Mr. President, please --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Counsel, you have nothing to do with this now. This was only with regard to these two. Since you are representing, I don't think that I should give you any more time on this.


MR. SEGATWA:
No, I did not want to speak on that issue. In fact, I wanted to speak on the understanding of your decision because I thought that you were going to respond to our request regarding your discretionary powers to give us more time. I did not understand the answer that you gave to that request. Do you maintain the time limit found in the ruling, or are you going to tell Ndisegimana (sic) that it is clear that we can expect to be allowed more time, additional time for the cross-examination. In the event you refuse to consider our motion, I would request that you also give me additional time so that I should be able to contact afresh my client in order to be given instructions from him, instructions that are clear.

In addition to that, Mr. President, there is something which I did not understand in what you said. Perhaps the translation was not quite faithful or perhaps I was distracted. In any case, you cautioned Mr. Black and you also said that that caution also applies to the other counsel. Mr. President, I would like to know in what respect I should do something that should not further offend you. In my utterances, was there anything that showed a lack of respect toward the Trial Chamber? And, if that is the case, I apologise here and now. But in any case, as far as I do remember, I do not know of any of my utterances that may have been an offence to the Trial Chamber.


MR. PRESIDENT:
No, Counsel, there is no application to you. I said in case something happens, all counsel must take this into their consideration in behaving in court, so that is what is applicable to counsel.

And with regard to that time limit, I think I have sufficiently given an explanation to Mr. Taku when Mr. Taku raised that question.


MR. BLACK:
Mr. President, I take it you've -- are you going to make this 45 order or do you already consider it made?


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel, I think this Chamber is assigning you under Rule 45, and this assignment is to represent the interests of the Accused so there is no question of taking instructions from the Accused. This is only to represent the interests of the Accused. And what Mr. MacDonald referred to as far as signing of the document has no relevance today because you have already signed it at the time of acceptance of your assignment.


MR. BLACK:
Well, then, I would have to advise you, sir, that if you take -- since you are taking that position, I will have to advise General Ndindiliyimana, and General Ndindiliyimana will terminate my services completely.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Then it is up to Ndindiliyimana to do what he wants.


MR. BLACK:
That is what he will do, so I regret to --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Let me refer to Mr. Segatwa: The Court decides the time and not anybody else; not even the Accused. So when the time is allocated and if you use that time for various other things, then that will also go against the people who are asking for more time.


MR. MACDONALD:
May I make a comment, Your Honour, on representations I made. I think it is a very important issue. And by restating under Section 45, you are acknowledging the fact that my mandate was either revoked or suspended, and therefore we have to rely -- by relying on 45, you have to, as a statutory Tribunal, you have to follow the prescriptions of that section, and it clearly states, sir, that for me to re-engage in a new mandate following the Registrar's demands I have to sign that undertaking, because you could have assigned me to represent anybody else here. And I have to be -- I have to play my options. And one of my options is, if I'm going to accept to represent that person, I have the possibility of refusing that by not signing this undertaking.

But these are my submissions, Your Honour.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes.


MR. MACDONALD:
But just one thing, and I will respect your ruling, whatever it is. The only thing that I would ask, Mr. President, is that in the past, as you know, I have -- in probably 80 percent of the cases I've opened the parade; I was the first one to cross-examine. Now, I understand your ruling, we have a certain amount of days, but I would want to be in a position where if I have an extra day or two days, since my client is going to be the main target, I mean, there is no way around that. I don't think that if we have three days or four days left, I don't think you are going to cut me off to one day. I think you are probably going to exercise your discretion as provided by Perlick and allow me two or three days. So I would ask you in these special circumstances to allow me to cross-examine last so I could at least assess my -- the screening that I will have to obviously do. Mr. Black mentioned something like 15 days. I have a 42-page outline of questions, so I can't even give you an assessment. So that is the situation, Your Honour.


MR. PRESIDENT:
That is the very reason that the Court gave an assessment, Counsel, for you to work within that framework. Anyway, since you have indicated your mind, we will first listen to the evidence and then see how it goes.


MR. MACDONALD:
Very well. Thank you.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes. You may call the witness, Counsel.


MR. BLACK:
Just one last word, Mr. President. I just want to be clear. If you purport to use 45(b), you say it's -- my job is to protect the interests of the Accused, but the interests of the Accused are set out in the letter that I read to you which is not to do anything. Those are his interests; that is how he wants his interests protected. He wants me to do nothing. I can't go against those instructions. I never have in my life and I never will. I'm sorry --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Counsel, you may act according to his instructions. If he says not to ask any questions, you may do so.


MR. BLACK:
I won't even listen to the testimony, sir.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel, you may call the witness and commence the proceedings. You can tell them that we are ready.


THE REGISTRAR:
Yes, we are ready to hear the witness.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Ask the Registrar, please, to swear in the witness.


MR. KOUAMBO:
Yes, Your Honour. Before that, I just want to inform the Chamber that we have Mrs. Marla Doux (phonetic), the representative of the Canadian forces, sitting also at this table on behalf of the government of Canada.

So now I will ask General Dallaire to stand up, to raise his right hand and say after me.

(Declaration made by Roméo Dallaire in English)


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel. You may start now.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, in principle, the Prosecution has been allowed two half days. At the beginning of this direct examination, I would like to point the Chamber that the half day of today has somehow been reduced and I believe this should be taken into account for the rest of our direct examination.

Furthermore, the representative of the registry a short while ago announced that that is that Mrs. Marla Doux is in the room and that she represents the government of Canada. I think in the room we should also have Mr. Hervé Yarovsky (phonetic), who is the counsel for General Dallaire.

Registry representative, is Mr. Hervé there? If you can hear me, is he there, Mr. Hervé?


MR. YAROVSKY:
Yes, Mr. Bâ, I'm also sitting at this table.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Is the Defence represented there?


MR. KOUAMBO:
I'm just saying that Mr. Hervé is also sitting at this table. He is the legal lawyer of General Dallaire.


MR. PRESIDENT:
No. My question is whether the Defence is represented -- is anybody from the Defence represented there?


MR. KOUAMBO:
Yes, Your Honour. Mrs. Nina LeBlanc is also sitting there and Mr. Tamadou is also there for the Office of the Prosecution.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. Bâ.


MR. BÂ:
Thank you, Mr. President, I believe I have your leave.

ROMÉO DALLAIRE,
first having been duly sworn,
testified as follows:

EXAMINATION-IN-CHIEF

BY MR. BÂ:

Q. Good morning, General Roméo Dallaire. General, do you have any specific occupation at this point in time?

A. I am a senator in the Canadian parliament.

Q. If I understand you correctly, you are no longer serving in the Canadian army as a member -- as an active member of the Canadian army?

A. I was medically released on the 18th of April in the year 2000.

Q. General, at the time you were retired, what specific duties did you perform in the Canadian army, that is, in the year 2000?

A. I was a serving lieutenant general, three-star general, responsible for the officer professional development and the reform of the Canadian officer corps, responding directly to the chief of the defence tasks.

Q. Okay.


THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER:
Mr. President, we are sorry for the interruption. Mr. President, the French booth interpreters who are receiving what is coming in from Canada are complaining that they can hardly hear what is being said by Mr. Dallaire.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Mr. Witness, could you kindly speak into the mike because the reception is not that clear. So please get closer to the microphone when you speak.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. In 1993, General, did you work for the UN?

A. In July of 1993 I was seconded from the Canadian forces to the UN in a role of a force commander and mission aide for the mission in Uganda and, as such, I held the rank of D1 within the UN.

Q. What was the first assignment entrusted to you by the United Nations; your first mission or your first assignment?

A. My first mission was to command a mission called UNAMOR, which was the mission to monitor the Ugandan/Rwandan border along the line in which the RPF zone was established in Rwanda and to a depth of 20 kilometres in order to report if any materials or troop movements were being conducted out of Uganda into Rwanda in support of the RPF possible campaign.

Q. Okay. Was that mission known as UNAMIR, that is, the one that you conducted or you were in charge of at the border between Uganda and Rwanda? Was it already known at the time as UNAMIR?

A. The first mission, which is the one we are speaking of, was called UNAMOR which was a mission established separately for the conduct of that surveillance of the Ugandan/Rwandan border. The mission of UNAMIR in July was not in existence as the Arusha Peace Accords had not yet been signed, and I subsequently received orders officially that, in fact, UNAMIR was in existence with a mandate on 5 October of the same year.

Q. During that period of July and August, General, did you go to Kigali?

A. In order to review and establish whether there should be a mission, a peacekeeping mission, within Rwanda, in accordance with the request laid out in the Arusha accord that was signed in early August, I was sent on a reconnaissance mission originally to be led by a political officer who had been sitting in Arusha during the negotiations, a Mr. Pedanou (phonetic), who fell ill the day before we left. And so on the 17th of August, I left with a composite team of over 12 personnel to conduct a nearly two-week assessment of whether or not a peacekeeping mission was possible and whether it was necessary in response to the requests of the Arusha peace accord.

Q. Thank you, General. As part of that surveillance mission, did you meet those in charge of the former belligerent forces?

A. During the mission I conducted meetings with both the ex-belligerents and on the government side with a series of meetings principally with the military personnel, and on the last day I had the opportunity of meeting the president before we left. And on the RPF side I had meetings with the head of the RPF, the chairman, with the head of the military structures and a number of their political and military leaders. I also held clarification meetings throughout that time frame where we on particularly the military side spent considerable time ensuring that we all understood what the protocols meant and so that there would not be any ambiguity between us. During those times a retired Colonel Bagosora led the government side with the chiefs of staff of the gendarmerie and the army and on the other side a gentleman called Pasteur Bizimungu led their team of military and civilian personnel.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Mr. Bâ, since we are working until 8:00, we will have only one break today because of the delay of the proceedings. I propose to have the break by 5:45 to 6:15. Or if you want any adjustment, you can inform the Court.


MR. BÂ:
Yes, sir.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. Was there an effective ceasefire at the time? That is, in August when you went to Rwanda, was there an effective ceasefire?

A. There was a ceasefire fully effective monitored by the organisation of African Unity observers. They were very light on the ground, about 60 personnel; was made up also of officers from both the RGF and the RPF, and the troops were essentially on either side of the demilitarised zone in their own defensive positions, as were troops on the government side deployed also in other regions of the country and particularly around the capital. There had not been any incidents of ceasefire violations at that time nor up until the time I actually took command of the mission which was on the ground on the 22nd of October.

Q. Thank you, General. I'm going to ask the representative of the registry to show you a map of Rwanda so that you can identify or mark out the positions of the parties, how those positions of the ex-belligerents were at the time of the cease fire.


MR. BÂ:
Could the representative of the registry please hand over the map of Rwanda to General Dallaire so you will show us the part of the territory that was occupied by the RPF and the part of the territory occupied by the Rwandan government forces, that is, the FAR.


MR. MACDONALD:
This is not an objection, Your Honour, but do we have a copy of this? I mean, we have binders -- we have nine binders for everybody of the documents we are going to be producing. I'm assuming you have a copy of that map, Mr. Bâ. Because I can't see from here what is on that map, obviously.


MR. BÂ:
Well, it is the map of Rwanda. There aren't two maps of Rwanda.


MR. MACDONALD:
I just want you to say it is this or that report; no mystery.


MR. BÂ:
It is a map of Rwanda. Maybe this should be put on the screen, and if you have any objection with respect to the reliability of such a map, you could say so. If you think that is not a reliable document, you can make your views known.


MR. MACDONALD:
I'm only saying that because I can't see it. That is -- all I see is a blur.


MR. PRESIDENT:
He can't see it clearly so if you have an extra map you can give it. Otherwise, just say that you don't have it.


MR. MACDONALD:
I'm just enquiring.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Do you have an additional map for him to go through? That is what he is requesting.


MR. MACDONALD:
I don't have any additional copy, but I can look for them.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. Are you there, General? Can you do that identification for us, that is, the two areas that were occupied by the parties, the ex-belligerents?

A. Yes. If we use this map of Rwanda, which was the maps available to us at that time, the RPF were essentially in the northern part, up here, between the Ugandan border and a zone which was never more than about 10 kilometres.

Q. Sorry, General. Sorry, General. Apparently, the Defence has some objection.


MR. MACDONALD:
(Microphones overlapping) ... the record. He has to either give him a marker and have him mark these regions because here on appeal if you wish to go on appeal, you are not going to know where "here" was, so it has to be identified clearly, and I would ask that a copy of that map be sent here. I don't know -- Mr. Black had suggested some type of a fax system so we could see the documents that General Dallaire identifies. But I think his attention should be brought to the fact that he has to clearly identify it with a marker, the regions he is referring to.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel, ask him to mark the areas with a marker.


MR. BÂ:
Well, that is what I was going to do. Well, that's the purpose of this exercise, by the way.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. So if you can use a marker, General, or several different colours to show us the area occupied by RPF, and maybe write into that particular area the words "RPF."

A. Right. We are going to get a piece of plastic to put over the map so as not to damage it. And also if I may humbly suggest that in the UN report on Rwanda this map is clearly identified with the different zones, that is, the RPF zone, the demilitarised zone and the RGF zone.
I am not going to hold up deliberations because the plastic is not readily available, and so I will do it from memory the general outline of the different zones. And if I follow a line, this zone up here is the RPF zone. And then you have a zone like so that is called the demilitarised zone. And everything south of that is essentially the government zone.

Q. Thank you, General. Maybe we will be using that map later on. Could you go back to your seat and I will move on with my questions.


MR. MACDONALD:
Shouldn't we identify it, Mr. Bâ, either as an ID or P? If we do refer to it later at least we are going to know it's the same map.


MR. BÂ:
What do you want us to identify? What do you mean by identifying?


MR. MACDONALD:
Well, the witness has just drawn something on a map. It needs to be identified. It has to have a number, ID or P or --


MR. BÂ:
Well, before I end with the examination-in-chief, I will do so. We will get back to it. It will be given a number later on.

MR. MACDONALD:
The only way to do it is he has referred to it, he has marked it, you have to identify it. If he comes back to that card later on, we have to know what we are talking about: That is the card you marked earlier on. It is ID. 1 or ID. 2 or ID 5. But if you don't want to do it that way, I'm not insisting.


MR. BÂ:
We will continue, General.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. At the time, what would be your estimate of the Rwandan government forces when you went there in August 1993?

A. The estimates -- well, the data that we received from both ex-belligerents reflected forces on the RGF side of about 23- to 24,000. These -- this information under the prospect of a UN mission, a peacekeeping mission, is to be voluntarily provided by the ex-belligerents who are seeking full transparency in order to assist the process of implementing the peace agreement.

Q. So you are saying the Rwandan government forces -- well, what were you told? What were you told?

A. Those -- what I was told is what I have provided you: A figure of about 23- to 24,000 troops for the actual army of the government side.

Q. In the case of the gendarmerie -- does that figure include the gendarmerie?

A. No. The gendarmerie figure varied from a figure of 4- to 6,000. Throughout all this, the definitive number, that is to say, the exact number double checked by nominal roles was not conducted nor is it conducted in such operations.

Q. What will be your estimate of the Presidential Guard? That is, in that figure of 22- to 24,000 constituting the Rwandan government forces, how many would be of the Presidential Guard?

A. The figure that I recall of the Presidential Guard was about 600.

Q. Thank you, General.

And the RPF strengths at the time, what would be your estimate?

A. Again, the figures I provide you are the figures that we received from the ex-belligerents with nominal verification, and the figure from the RPF was in the order of 11- to 12,000.

Q. Thank you. Are you able to tell us something about the armaments of the ex-belligerents? Well, the basis of what you were told by those whom you met?

A. Yes. Well, if we start with the government forces -- and the listing of weapons are personal weapons, that is, light machine guns and rifles, and then a series of more substantive weapons systems, mortars up to 120 millimetre mortars, artillery pieces, 105 guns, air defence, heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft machine guns, attack helicopters, and also a reconnaissance vehicle with a heavy weapons system on them, and each of these weapons systems had a variety of numbers to them that were part of the different battalions or organisations. On the RPF side, essentially light weapons, with also mortars up into the heavy mortar level of 120 millimetre, and anti-aircraft missiles, which were not confirmed, but the last data I believe we had were SA-7s.

Q. Thank you, General. In August, when you went to Rwanda, who was in charge of the Rwandan government? Who was the prime minister of Rwanda?

A. At the time in charge of the government -- well, there was of course the president, Ndindiliyimana, and then there was Madam Agathe, who was the prime minister of a government coalition pending the establishment of the broad-based transitional government.


MR. PRESIDENT:
The president was not Ndindiliyimana. I think he made a mistake.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. Well, he wanted to say there were all those people. Well, the question I wanted to ask is who was the prime minister. So, General, we all agree that it was Agathe Uwilingyimana, right?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Did you meet her on that occasion? Did you meet her on that occasion, General?

A. I'm just thinking back to now. It seems to me that I met very few politicians and I'm searching my brain to really tell you whether I met her or not. I'm left with the impression I'm uncertain.

Q. Thank you, General.


MR. MACDONALD:
I don't want to be annoying, Your Honour, but I noticed that General Dallaire is consulting some notes, and I would like to know what these notes are because he is obviously referring to them, not only refreshing his memory, and ultimately we might ask for these notes to be given to us, provided to us under jurisprudence. So could we know exactly what he is referring to?


MR. PRESIDENT:
General Dallaire, you are -- we've got the impression that you were looking at something, either your personal notes -- what are these?


THE WITNESS:
Your Honour, what I have before me is a list of names and positions that are listed at the end of -- in the glossary of my book, and I referred to them in order to refresh my memory after all this time, and also my ability to always put both surname and full name together.


MR. PRESIDENT:
You have no objection to letting the Defence look at this document that you are looking at?


THE WITNESS:
No, absolutely not. It's purely a listing.


MR. MACDONALD:
It's probably what I use also. There is a part of General Dallaire's book that I refer to. But perhaps Mrs. LeBlanc could have a look at it whenever it is convenient but we are not going to waste time. Just go on.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. Now, at the end of your surveillance mission, did you prepare a report? As part of your terms of reference, did you prepare a report, General, at the end of your surveillance mission?

A. Yes. What I did was, because I had a multi-disciplinary team, is that we prepared a draft before we left Kigali and the report was then finalised in the first weeks of September and then submitted to my superiors in the peacekeeping operations for their review.

(1630H )

BY MR. BÂ:

Q. So after that, did your work with the United Nations come to an end or were you assigned to some other mission subsequently?

A. Well, if you call it -- I still had the mission in Uganda which I had not yet reported to and so I continued to monitor and prepare my departure to take over command of that mission. And during the month of September I spent considerable time with the UN staff in regards to not only the content of my report but also in advising ultimately the report that went through the secretary general and then to the Security Council in order to secure a mandate for a peacekeeping mission which I had recommended.

Q. General, you have not quite answered my question. I would like your answers to be more brief because we are still at the preliminary stage, merely laying the foundation, so your answers should be more brief. My question is to find out whether at the end of the surveillance mission that you undertook in the month of August, I want to find out if subsequently, the United Nations assigned you to some other mission.

A. No, I terminated my reconnaissance. I went back to Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa to brief the facilitator, who was the president of Tanzania, to brief Dr. Salim Salim, who was the secretary general of the Organisation of African Unity and then went back to New York and continued working on that mission.

Q. Well, we do not quite agree. Maybe I need to rephrase. Maybe I am the one who didn't phrase it properly. Subsequently, and this is common knowledge, it is in the public domain, you were assigned a peacekeeping mission. I mean, just to be brief about this, were you assigned a peacekeeping mission?

A. Well, in all this I am being responsible. The only mission I had at that time is the mission for Uganda, UNAMOR. There is no mission yet for Rwanda. That mission doesn't really come into existence until the mandate is approved on the 5th of October. I am doing preliminary work to assist the Secretary general and the Security Council on deciding whether there will be a mission or not.

Q. So, was the decision ultimately made for a mission in Rwanda, and when was that decision made?

A. Within the first week or so of my return, so we were getting closer to the middle of September. DPKO, the peacekeeping operation agreed with my assessment and we proceeded to make the recommendations in the format of the UN up to the chain -- up to the Security Council who finally took the decision to agree with a mandate for a peacekeeping mission in Rwanda on the 5th of October. At that time I was also then told that I would be commanding the mission as the force commander and that there would be assigned to the mission a special representative of the secretary general, a civilian politician.

Q. Okay. What was your mandate? What was the legal basis, as it were, for that mission of yours?

A. The basis of it comes from the Security Council, who also agreed on my becoming the temporary head of the mission until the special representative arrives and to be the force commander. The mandate documents laid out my duties and responsibilities or the objectives of the mission, which is essentially a Chapter 6 peacekeeping mission which is limited to observing and reporting on the mission and assisting the ex-belligerents in implementing the Arusha Peace Accords under the limits of the mandate.

Q. So it was a Chapter 6 assignment or Chapter 6 mission. So what did it allow you to do and what did it not allow you to do? In other words, what were the limitations on that Chapter 6 mission that you had to undertake?

A. Well, the practical response is in the mandate document, which is a fairly lengthy document. From my recollection, I was to assist in supporting both ex-belligerents in their implementation of the peace agreements. I was to implement the concept of operations of the peacekeeping mission which included the establishment of a Kigali Weapons Secure Area around the capital and in the capital. I was to assist in the demining of certain regions that had suffered mining due to the previous civil war. I was to assist in the distribution of the humanitarian assistance that was needed because of the nearly 600,000 displaced persons. And I was also to assist in the -- also assisting in the demobilisation of and the reintegration of both the army and, of course, the subsequent gendarmerie that would come out of the process of the Arusha peace agreements.

Q. The use of force by those troops under your command, was it subject to some rule?

A. Yes, the implementation of the concept of operations under the mandate has within it a series of rules called the rules of engagement. The rules of engagement in a Chapter 6 are limited to self-defence, for our role is one of observing and reporting. And so within that limitation, we have some members of the military who are UN observers and are unarmed, and some members are of the mission who are uniformed units, like battalions, who have weapons but only light weapons for the self-defence in their roles of protecting UN sites and the like. I had, however, in writing myself the rules of engagement in September before leaving, included a section in regard to the use of force should there be a large scale crime against humanity or better known as massacres. That is a paragraph that I took from a Chapter 7 mission in Cambodia because we were concerned about the possibility that massacres might happen if the situation did not proceed according to the plan.

Q. General, when did you arrive in Rwanda for the purpose of carrying out the second mission? When did you reach Rwanda?

A. I arrived on the 22nd of October, the day after the coup in Burundi, which was the 21st.

Q. When you arrived, were all your troops present there?

A. In a rather unusual circumstance, I as the force commander was the first person of the force on the ground and I had brought with me three officers from my mission in Uganda, as my concept of operations at that mission fell under my command also. And so over a period of nearly five months the troops that I had asked for ultimately in the mandate kept coming within the sequential fashion.

Q. And when you had all your forces on the ground, how many were they? How many troops were there altogether?

A. Well, when you ask me about forces, there are two components to it; one is the number of troops and the other one is the equipment that makes up the force. When I had my full complement, I believe it was 2,568 military. There were a couple hundred civilians also from the civilian side of the mission. However, the only contingent that actually had equipment to do the task that they were to accomplish were the small Belgian contingent, with the Bangladesh contingent having about one quarter of what was required.

Q. I was going to ask a question concerning the Belgian contingent. In terms of efficiency and operational capacity, what did the Belgian contingent represent to you?

A. Well, in light of the troops I received and the equipment they had, the Belgian contingent was a professional NETO contingent of about 450, which represented only half of what I had been promised, and so I got only half a battalion, two companies. The equipment they had was light equipment as a peacekeeping force. That equipment, however, was in very poor shape because it had just come in from the Somali mission and so they spent nearly two months with extra personnel to do maintenance to bring it up to a reasonable state. Their capability was mostly by the professional training, they had the communications, command and control. They had the mobility once all the vehicles were fixed that they had and as such were the primary force within my mission.

Q. General, with respect to the Arusha Accords, I believe you were there under the Arusha Accords. Now, with reference to those accords, which were the main tasks that you had to carry out, that is, after your arrival in October?

A. That is a most significant question inasmuch the Arusha Accords was asking for a neutral international force and, within that context, had it as a mandate to be more than simply observing but also saw it as potentially protecting and so the Arusha Accords had a mandate about this. Why? However, the UN under the mandate that I was given as a Chapter 6 peacekeeping mission had me limited to only observing self-defence and reporting and thus did not have any authority to conduct protection within the context of Rwandans, only close protection to the UN mission and UN assets.

Q. Under the Arusha Accords, were there new institutions that had to be put in place, that had to be set up?

A. Well, under the accords there were series of events that would have to happen of which a very irresponsible time sequence was established, meaning that after the signing and in early August, they expected -- those who signed the document expected that the UN mission fully implemented would be ready in 37 days so that a broad-based transitional government would be established around, I believe, the 10th of September. Well, there was absolutely no way of meeting any of those milestones and so even with the sense of urgency that I attempted to get approved in the mandate, we still had to put a sequence of months into the process with the first element being the deployment of enough of my forces to take over the demilitarised zone; secondly, enough forces to be able to relieve the French half battalion that was on the ground, so foreign forces would leave; thirdly, the movement of the battalion of the RPF into Kigali and the protection force for their political structures; and then fourthly, the establishment of the broad-based transitional government which we were aiming for to be established by the 1st of January 1994.

Q. Before talking about the broad-based transitional government, were all your troops present in Kigali, and how did you dispose -- or, rather, place them on Rwandan territory? How did you position them on Rwanda, or how did you deploy them on Rwandan territory?

A. The troops’ deployment to tasks were as follows: The most capable operationally unit being the half Italian or Belgian were deployed in the centre of the capital with a substantive force at the airfields and that was my most vulnerable strategic point. The half battalion from Bangladesh was also deployed in the capital conducting a vital point guards and peripheral responsibilities and also being my force reserve in order to be able to respond should a problem arise between the two forces and that would need a more blue beret presence. I then deployed the battalion of Ghanaians inside the demilitarised zone at some specific point, but because they had no vehicles, they were still not operationally effective three months after their arrival. And then throughout the country, including the capital and in the RPF zone, I deployed unarmed observers, whose job was to observe and report any altercations or any misactions under the peace agreement. And then within the capital, in order to assist in implementing the KWSA, which is the Kigali Weapons Secure Area, I deployed also other series of observers who were deployed at the various camps to monitor the movement of the RPF battalion and all of the RGF, including the gendarmerie major units which were the two jolly (sic) companies which were very rapid reaction force. And because of the Burundi coup and ending up with over 300,000 refugees in the south of Rwanda, I had to pull forces from my previous plan to the south in order to monitor that region in case there might be altercations between the Burundi refugees and the Rwandans and assisting in the humanitarian process.

Q. Thank you, General. In view of the establishment of the broad-based transition government, was there any time when the RPF dispatched some of its political representatives and forces to Kigali?

A. On the 28th of December we conducted an operation called "Clean Corridor", which was the movement of a battalion, a light battalion of the RPF of 600 strong with the chairman of the RPF and his senior political leaders into the CND, which is the Rwandan parliament in downtown Kigali. They functioned there in a defensive position and provided escorts as the RGF had escorted and were escorting the government politicals, and all that monitored by my escort in those various duties of negotiation and so on to continue their implementation and the establishment of the broad-based transitional government.

Q. Perhaps I omitted to ask this. But where did you ask them to stay? I mean, the political officials and -- of the RPF, where did you ask them to stay?

A. Well, sir, I in fact did not ask them. When we were in the process of negotiating where that battalion should be, in accordance with the Arusha agreement and the mandate, it was left to the government side to propose sites that would be suitable to be able to house a battalion plus the required number of VIPs and political staff that would go with them. And so a series of sites were identified for them, and it is the government who ultimately decided which site they would use and that was the CND site.

Q. Thank you, General. Did you have observers at the CND?

A. Yes, I had essentially a Tunisian company that was deployed around the CND, a small company of about 60 soldiers, with also inside a small group of UN observers who maintained communications and discussions and whatever other requirements such as logistics and the like, coordinating all convoys and such matters with the RPF battalion and the leadership of the RPF unit.

Q. Thank you. The forces that you had on the ground, did they check movements into and out of the CND building?

A. Yes. Their responsibility was to take note of all movements of political staff with their escorts, military escorts, which was the only reason why the escorts of the military could leave the compound either escorting RPF politicals to various meetings in Kigali or escorting logistics convoys to and from the RPF zone as they brought their needs and sustained their needs in Kigali. They also took note of people who were around the entrance and surrounding area who were also taking note of who -- which was the subject of a complaint on my part in regards to coordinating that effort with the government side.

Q. Thank you. General, from the moment when the RPF contingent came to Kigali at the end of December, was the circulation of weapons inside Kigali subject to any regulations?

A. We established the Kigali Weapons Secure Area just before Christmas and in establishing that we then proceeded to verify vehicles, conduct spontaneous checks and deploy my observers to various camps and places where military equipment, including ammunition and troop deployments, were established in the weapons secure area. And subsequently I had asked that all those movements were reported in accordance with the protocol that was signed between the RPF, the RGF and myself for the implementation of the KWSA.

Q. The Kigali Weapons Secure Area, under the accords that were signed, what were the respective obligations of the parties concerned? What could the parties do and what were they not allowed to do?

A. One must remember that the KWSA was a creation that I brought in with my staff because of this unusual situation where we would have a battalion from an ex-belligerent race inside the other belligerent -- ex-belligerent's zone. And so in order to ensure that we were able to guarantee the balance and also the establishment of the positions for the implementation of the peace agreement, we brought about the weapons secure area.

Now, in that context, essentially, all weapons were secured in the barracks or armoury; ammunition and weapons were counted on a regular basis. No troop movement was allowed bigger than a section, which is about 10 men. If it went any higher, it needed a dedicated escort from me. No movement of logistics, convoys and so on would happen unless it had observers from me. And no movement of VIPs with escorts were allowed to happen unless it also had an escort from my forces. And on a regular basis we conducted impromptu roadside checks of vehicles to see that no weapons were being brought in or moved out of the weapons secure area.

Q. Thank you, General. General, in the month of January 1994, were there any attempts made to put in place the transition institutions?

A. Yes. There were a number of attempts made, the first one being on the 5th of January, which was a partial success inasmuch the president, President Habyarimana, was sworn in under the new structure of the political government established by the Arusha Accords in the broad-based transitional government.

Q. So on the 5th of January President Habyarimana was sworn-in. The transition government and national transition assembly, were they also inaugurated, were they also sworn-in on that 5th of January?

A. No, that ultimately never happened, which was the political impact that festered on for months and as there were conflicts, negotiations going on within the political parties in regard to the people who were representing --

Q. General -- General, I am sorry for the interruption. Let us go step by step. We are still dealing with the month of January. On the 5th of January, what did that attempt come up against?

A. Right. We had received a list of those who were to be sworn-in, including the president, of course, but on that day a number of the people who were to be sworn-in were not able to get to the CND because there were significant actions taken by the civilian population in and around the CND and access to it. Also there was a very strong disagreement on the list of those who were to be sworn-in as they varied from the list that had been negotiated for nearly a month previously. We saw different elements who were there and preventing the movement of some of the moderates. And also my staff noticed the presence of some members of the Presidential Guard in civilian dress who were also amongst the crowd inciting violent reactions.


MR. MACDONALD:
Mr. Bâ, perhaps since we are dealing with that matter, are you going to produce Mr. Segatwa's matter, one and two? Could General Dallaire be more specific as to whether it was in the morning or in the afternoon? That is the French.


MR. BÂ:
Please wait for your cross-examination to raise that matter.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. So, General, you are saying that there were people who were not allowed to access the area. Could we know those persons who were not allowed into that area? And furthermore, who prevented them from gaining access into the CND?

A. The information by my memory of those who couldn't make it were people like Landouald, and I am really searching my brain for the names of others who were prevented from going there. I am not sure if I have written them out in my book either. There were also -- those who were preventing the movement were the population, but as far as we could determine from the information I was getting from my staff is that they were being incited to prevent people from getting or making their way to the CND and that some Presidential Guard members had been seen doing that.

Q. You also told us about divergent lists or the replacement of lists. Could you please be more precise on that point?

A. I am a little hard pressed to do that because one of my memory failing is that there were so many of those exercises. And I am trying to remember the list that was negotiated was not ultimately the one that was used for the invitations by the protocol officer of the government to attend and that list and -- and I am hard pressed now to say who generated it, and it changed -- the list, in fact, came from the protocol officer of the government, and so who in the government specifically did that, I am afraid, I don't have any recollection of that.

Q. Thank you, General. That's okay, General. In early January 1994, General, was the road now cleared for the setting up of the transitional institutions or was it somehow blurred? Were prospects -- did they look blurred for the future? Did they look blurred?

A. The situation was complex inasmuch -- already by the 10th of December we had to have the SRG intervene to bring back the parties on track with the process of bringing about the broad-based transitional government, that is the solutioning of the list and we had extensive negotiations of that and that even failed, as I indicated, on the 5th of January. And that stagnation, that political stagnation was the source of numerous meetings of all parties attempting to bring resolution to the final listing of the politicians to specific ministerial positions so that we can get on with actually swearing them in and bringing both a broad-based and transitional government.

Q. At the time, was someone appointed or designated to be prime minister of the broad-based transitional government?

A. Yes. In the Arusha Accords the prime minister designate was to be Faustin Twagiramungu, who attended all these negotiating sessions sitting to the last of the special representative.

Q. General, did you meet Faustin Twagiramungu during those early days of January 1994?

A. Yes, I had the opportunity when I attended those sessions to meet with him. And also I had a private session with him when he came to visit me in early January to speak to me of a particular situation regarding an informant.

Q. What was the day? Do you remember the day when he came to see you to talk about an informer?

A. Yes, I believe -- if the 11th of January was the day, I -- we had met with Faustin on other occasions, but they were all purely politically motivated meetings in regards to the political impact.

Q. Well, let's stay in January, General. When he came to see you to talk to you about an informer, as you say, how did he appear to you? Did he seem worried? So how did he look, in what state was he?

A. The prime minister was a pretty staid individual who was not particularly expressive with emotions and that is why on that occasion I found it so unusual and that he was quite flustered and concerned in bringing news, particularly sensitive, and it could be considered potentially dangerous information from the informant.

Q. What did he tell you when you met?

A. He told me that a high level member of the Interahamwe organisation had approached him saying that he had information on the operations, that he could not continue to function within the Interahamwe process nor as a youth movement supporting the MRND party because of the extreme misactions that were being planned and also the training and the arming of the militia that was ongoing.

Q. Upon obtaining that report or that information, what did you do? Did you try to do something about it?


MR. MACDONALD:
I object, Your Honour. For the record, I understand that this is hearsay evidence. It is not to be used for any other purpose than to explain General Dallaire's ulterior behaviour, by the way.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Counsel MacDonald objects to the question, for the record.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. General, after you met Faustin Twagiramungu and got that information, did you react? Did you decide to do something about it?

A. Yes, this coming from the gentleman in question and knowing his responsibility in the future government, I immediately contacted the commander of Kigali secteur, which was Colonel Luc Marchal and asked him to do the follow-up in regard to inquiring, interviewing, gathering what information might be available from this individual, and from that we would assess whether or not it was privileged or simply an opportunity of information being passed to us, as in so many other cases we were getting hearsay of commentary from different people but with very little hard facts to be able to corroborate it, due to the fact that I was not a Chapter 7 mission, which meant that I was not authorised to conduct classic military intelligence gathering.

Q. Did Colonel Marchal report to you on the outcome of his investigations on that day or some other day?

A. Yes, he reported back to me that same evening in my quarters escorted by his operations officer and I also had my information officer with me and also my executive assistant was there already and he briefed us with a fairly detailed listing of information that this informant was providing in regard to the operations and actions being done by the Interahamwe and by the leadership of the MRND party.

Q. Well, from your recollections -- I know this might be difficult. Well, what did he tell you, what was the purport? What were the salient points contained in that Colonel Marchal's report?

A. The -- exactly as I can recollect, the most direct point was the fact that the MRND party was arming and training the Interahamwe to be not only a force to be used should they be required to fight, but also to be a force to be used to conduct massive scale of rounding up and killing of the Tutsis on or -- it contained also information of arms being distributed, training being conducted, of lists of being made of targets that they would go after and the general information in regard to the conduct of the Interahamwe in what it potentially would be doing if called upon to implement that would seem to be a very diabolical plan of attacking and killing ultimately on a large scale the Tutsis.

Q. Upon obtaining that information, General, what did you do?

A. Well, with that information, including the fact that he had mentioned that the Belgian soldiers would be potentially targeted, and that came as a deduction that we had on the Mogadishu operation of the Americans in October previously where those soldiers that had attacked the Americans and forgot -- with that information, also querying this on his professional assessment of the content and of his assessment who this guy was, how credible he seemed to be, I took that information and I acted upon it by giving direction to Luc to maintain links with this individual, to seek more detailed information, to find a means of confirming that information, maybe finding out where weapons were or seeing some plans or something of that nature, and also to prepare an operation in a target that we could be able to identify over the next 36 hours, which would be a day and half hence or nearly a day and a half hence of this meeting. And so I then had my staff put together a summary of all that information, reviewed it, signed it and sent it up to -- got a cable back to peacekeeping operations in New York.


MR. BÂ:
Registry, could you show Document No. 1, that's in the folder that we gave to you. I think it is produced as Exhibit 67, which was tendered through Witness Frank Claeys, 67.


MR. MACDONALD:
(Inaudible)


MR. BÂ:
Which document?


MR. MACDONALD:
You are producing a document, can we have it, please?


MR. BÂ:
But you have it.


MR. MACDONALD:
We gave you our documents that we were producing. Give us yours. Even though they were produced, we want to see what you are producing.


MR. BÂ:
But those were disclosed to you. That is Document No. 1.


MR. SEGATWA:
Mr. President, I had asked that the Prosecutor make available to us some of the documents in the course -- which he will be using for the direct examination. Until today, we have not received any such document.


MR. BÂ:
Well, 15th of November 2006, you have received -- 15th November 2006.


MR. SEGATWA:
Since when?


MR. BÂ:
Two weeks.


MR. SEGATWA:
No such items were disclosed to us.


MR. BÂ:
You were still in Arusha at the time and you said the Defence didn't receive anything.

Mr. Roger Kouambo, can you hear me?


MR. KOUAMBO:
Yes, Mr. Bâ.


MR. PRESIDENT:
One second, Mr. Bâ. There was some sets of -- a few sets of documents that were filed with the registry by the Prosecution. Have they been collected or served on the Defence?


MR. KOUAMBO:
Yes, they were sent by e-mail on the same day.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, of course, we've got our copy.


MR. TAKU:
I regret very respectfully that I have not been served and also my client has not been served. The important reason for service is that not only should counsel be served, but my client should be served in UNDF so that he knows the nature of the evidence that would be tendered against him. At the moment I am talking he has not been served and I have not been served. It would be preposterous to say that my client would be served by e-mail considering the restrictions in the UNDF.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Do you have a set of your copies?


MR. KOUAMBO:
Mr. President, from the registry staff, Mr. Kouambo.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. Kouambo.


MR. KOUAMBO:
Let me confirm that those documents were sent by e-mail using the same procedure to the various parties.


MR. BÂ:
It seems to me --


MR. KOUAMBO:
This was done before I left for Arusha.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Mr. MacDonald, this is the set that he is using which I received.


MR. MACDONALD:
We have cases and cases of paper, Your Honour, that my assistant and my legal intern have been preparing for weeks now. I can't -- we can't go through this document while the witness is in the box. I suggest we have to adjourn this, please give us time to get familiar with this material. I understand some of it we know, we have seen, but the only -- the only alternative would be to suspend the proceedings till tomorrow, give us chance to look at these documents.


MR. TAKU:
Your Honours, I join in this application for the simple reason that it should not be taken for granted that sending documents by e-mail -- and I say I have not received them -- solves the problem. These documents must be served on the clients, on the Accused at UNDF. It is the understanding -- it is the Accused that will look at these documents, understand them and thereafter you ask adequate instructions. If documents are not served on the Accused, then that is not proper service. Furthermore, Your Honours, we have been here all this while. Since the motion on this issue was on, all the counsels have been here, and respectfully, Your Honour, I have not been served. I have not seen exactly what documents they are talking about. And I think, Your Honours --


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, this is something totally fabricated. I have asked my case manager to go and print the e-mail sent by the registry to them all and all the teams, all the Defence teams received them. I knock on wood, all of them received.


MR. SEGATWA:
You don't need to put your hand in fire for no reason. On the 16th of November 2006, we received
the -- a pro justitia testimony, I think it was against three Interahamwe leaders, I think Izabera, that is all I received on the 11th of November by e-mail. And you will remember, Mr. President, that prior to the departure of Kouambo when Mr. Sefon was engaged in cross-examination, I did make mention of the fact that these documents had to be disclosed to us and which we will have to rely for cross-examination. And I was told that Kouambo had the documents, and Kouambo himself had said he had not received anything and until now, today, as I speak, Sagahutu's team has not received any document from the Prosecution apart from what was sent by e-mail. It is a pro justitia document in which Roméo Dallaire was heard against some Interahamwe by the name Izabera.


MR. BÂ:
That was last Friday, but the initial disclosure was made on Wednesday the 15th.


MR. SEGATWA:
I never received that.


MR. BÂ:
Well, it is back from the registry and there -- the transmission letter is there, the Honourable Judges of the Trial Chamber and all Defence teams.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Well, Counsel, we received it on Wednesday or Thursday, that is all I can say. After Mr. Segatwa mentioned that in court, the very next day I think it was sent to us by the registry.


MR. SEGATWA:
No, no, Mr. President.


MR. PRESIDENT:
We will take the break now and come back in half --


MR. SEGATWA:
(Microphone not activated)


THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER:
Microphone.


MR. SEGATWA:
I never received these documents. Kouambo said he never received any documents from the Prosecutor for disclosure to me, and I had raised an objection about the failure to disclose those documents. We could not proceed with the session without having received the documents and this can be verified from the transcripts.


THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER:
Mr. Kouambo wishes to speak, sir.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes. Yes, Mr. Kouambo.


MR. KOUAMBO:
Yes, Mr. President, I would like to say that I never said that I never received the documents in question. I said I received the documents from the Prosecutor and that they had been sent to the parties according to the usual procedure by e-mail. So they were sent to the Accused in hard copy as is the usual procedure. So that is what I have to say.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Till your case manager looks into it, we will take the break now and come back at 6:00 so that we could continue till late.


MR. MACDONALD:
(Inaudible)


MR. BÂ:
So a break of 30 minutes.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Court is adjourned until 6:00.

(Court recessed from 1731H to 1805H)

MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Registrar, what is the position?


MR. TOURE:
Thank you, Mr. President. We have evidence here with us, evidence which clearly establishes that the documents we are talking about were indeed sent by e-mail, and in fact, I have here with me a document to that effect. We printed the evidence showing that the documents were actually sent to the parties. We also have the list of persons to whom the documents were sent. That list is indeed here with you.


MR. BÂ:
I thank you. Please, you can check this on your own e-mail because it was the same e-mail which was sent to all of you, Mr. Taku, Mr. Black, Mr. St-Laurent, Mr. Segatwa, Mr. Doumbia, Natalie Le Blanc, Mr. MacDonald, they all received this mail.


MR. SEGATWA:
Mr. President --


MR. BÂ:
(Microphone not activated)


THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER:
The Prosecution's microphone.


MR. BÂ:
Can we please avoid wasting more time and continue? It is clear that you received this mail.


MR. SEGATWA:
Mr. President, I think we are here dealing with uncertainties. It is said that documents were sent, which documents? From which page to which page? What are we talking about? In fact, I have the impression that we are no longer speaking the same language, even if we are all speaking French.

I am saying that the only document which I received is here. It is here with me. It was sent by the Prosecutor on the 16th of November. It was received by the registry on the 17th of November, and it is numbered 9017 bis -- 9,007 bis to 9157 bis. Can the Prosecution prove that apart from this document there were other documents received by us, because when we are talking about wasting time, I believe that it is important to first resolve important, crucial or procedural matters, matters relating to the disclosure of documents? If you would allow me, Prosecution, to finish, but if you please, I could speak again.


MR. BÂ:
Without wasting time, this document was sent on the 15th. You received it on the 16th at 11:34 a.m. The document was sent on the 15th in the afternoon and you received it in the afternoon -- or, rather, in the morning of the 16th.

Registry, please can you show this to them?


MR. SEGATWA:
I was saying that I will speak after the Prosecution interrupted me. On Saturday, I believe that Saturday was the 18th -- on Saturday I was with my client at UNDF and at that time my client did not have any document disclosed by the Prosecution. On Sunday -- Sunday is not a day for disclosure. It is very easy for us to be told that the document was sent by e-mail, but we are saying that -- I, and I am not alone, in fact, all Defence teams, no Defence team received this document. Could all Defence teams fail to receive this document at the same time? I do not think so. So, in order not to continue wasting time, there is one of the Accused persons who is here, he can tell you whether or not he received the document, because the documents could not have been sent to others without it being sent to him. So he is here, check with him whether the document was received by him. I am saying that the document was not disclosed and it is not in my interest to say that I did not receive the document. Why will I say that, given that I am the one who asked a long time ago to give me this document? I made that request to you, Mr. Bâ. I also made it to Mr. Alphonse. I think that I should be believed. I should be believed when I say that I did not receive this document. I thank you, Mr. President.


MR. BLACK:
I also only received the one document which I was very surprised to receive on Saturday, the statement to the Belgian authorities and General Dallaire's statement to the Belgian authorities. I was surprised to receive that late, but that's the only document I received over the weekend. I received nothing else.


MR. TAKU:
Your Honour, I think --


MR. PRESIDENT:
Counsel, do you have a set of copies? Do you have a set of copies of the document that was sent to --


MR. BÂ:
Yes, Mr. President, we could give them another set. I could ask my case manager to prepare another set of documents for them, but they received this document since Thursday morning.


MR. PRESIDENT:
You prepare four sets to them and hand them over, direct your case manager to do it, and you may continue -- without referring to this document, you may continue and we will --


MR. TAKU:
I think the essential problem here, Your Honour, is in respecting the time line imposed by the Court for documents to be filed. I remember, Your Honour, that you ordered in your scheduling order -- in the scheduling order, Your Honour, you directed that document be filed within a specific time, time line.


MR. PRESIDENT:
They have filed it with the registry, well, other than that, what can they do?


MR. TAKU:
No, Your Honours. What I am saying, Your Honours, is this: If it was filed on the 15th, if I understand correctly on the 15th, was that within the time line? That is the first thing. Secondly, as a matter of disclosure, the only documents I received were the statements recorded by the Belgian examining magistrate from General Dallaire in Canada, and I received that during the weekend, and I check my e-mail at least three times a day and refer all the mails to all members of my team and I haven't received it. So we protest the fact that the Prosecutor says that we received it, and for what purpose would I, in particular, receive the document and say I haven't received it?


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, that is not honest. They received the document and this can be attested to by the technical resources we have. They received the same document at the same -- they received the document at the same time as you; that was on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. The decision they are referring to, the decision in which you were saying that the document should be given to the registry staff seven days before, the purpose of that ruling was to enable the document disclosing, and the registry staff already have a first set of this document. I returned from Canada on Monday at night. On Tuesday we had a hearing and on Wednesday we made the disclosure.

Mr. President, if you ask me to continue without referring to these documents, I believe this would not be fair. I cannot put disorder in my direct examination. It is prepared in a logical manner and I must follow that logic. What I can do is perhaps is to request that these -- or, rather, that the counsel -- that Defence counsel should be given the documents, but I believe I should follow the order in which I prepared my direct examination.


(1815H)

MR. MACDONALD:
It is not a complicated issue, Your Honour. I have one question for Mr. Bâ: Is it going to be the left or the right hand, first of all? Second, it is as simple as that -- we don't have the documents, Your Honour. You cannot expect us to pursue with the examination-in-chief of Witness Dallaire, if we do not know what they are going to produce. We should have at least half an hour or an hour, or two hours to look at these documents.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Mr. Bâ, how many documents do you intend using now? If it is one or two, you can make copies and give to them and at least by morning give the balance, but according to this, the document that we have received from the registry, of course, all of the names of the Defence counsel are there with regard to the service of these documents. So, this had been the practice for the last one year but, anyway, since they are complaining that they have not got it, strangely, because we have got them, and it is all in the same -- same way. But, anyway, since they say they had not got it, I think we – you give the document that you are going to use now, two or three --- maybe. Get copies and give it to them and the balance -- since it has 206 pages, give the balance at least by tomorrow morning so that they will be ready by the evening.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, yes, we are going to do that, but this is not a fair strategy. Nobody can be mistaken about that. It is blatant. This is a strategy devised by the Defence. No one can be mistaken about that. But we are going to give you the documents and that will enable us to continue, but it is absolutely ridiculous.


MR. PRESIDENT:
I do not want to make any comments on that.

Yes, Counsel, you may get the document ready and give it to them.


THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER:
Microphone, please.


MR. BÂ:
Yes, for us to distribute the document we have to photocopy it, first of all. I do not have the necessary copies here in the courtroom. But they know very well that they did receive the documents.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Anyway, this is not the first time that you have heard of these documents. This document was produced through witness (inaudible) and you were aware of it and it is marked here, so why are you --


MR. MACDONALD:
We are referring to the cable of January 11th, which is a copy, it is not the original, we know that, from Mr. Clayton (phonetic). I have no problem with that, because we are familiar with that. We're not trying to -- do you think we have everybody here lying for -- to gain an hour or two hours?


MR. PRESIDENT:
I don't know, because this is the document that we have got it. But since you say there may be a problem with the transfer, I do not know.


MR. MACDONALD:
I am looking at my e-mail, Your Honour, and it is not there. November 16th is just not there, so.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, so there may be something. I do not know. It may be that there is something, I do not know.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, in order to save time – registry, can you give them a copy of P. 67; that is Prosecution Exhibit No. 67.


MR. PRESIDENT:
You will work on that, and we -- can you continue on that and make sure that you give it to them, the other document, by tomorrow morning so that they have time to go through it?


MR. SEGATWA:
Mr. President, I would, nevertheless, like to state that the Chamber should not start on a false premise; namely, that we are aware of the document that the Prosecution is using. I believe that on my request you ordered the Prosecution to disclose to us the documents that they would rely on in questioning Dallaire. We discussed at length and said that the CDs disclosed to us comprised more than 1,000 files. And we said it was not possible for us to open all the files, and the compromise was that the few documents that Prosecution had to rely on had to be disclosed to us. It is you, yourself, who asked Mr. Bâ to disclose those documents. So, today, we should not be told that we are familiar with those documents. We are not familiar with them. We have more than 3,000 documents, and we believe that he is not going to file or put before you 3,000 documents.


MR. PRESIDENT:
I said that you are familiar with the document that he is using now. That is what I said; I said that you are just jumping in (inaudible) and putting the blanket on all the documents. What I have said was that you are familiar with the documents that he is using now, which had been used earlier.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, I would like to continue. Thank you.

Registry representative in Ottawa, can you give document 1 to General Dallaire, that is, document P. 67?


MR. KOUAMBO:
Yes, Counsel for the Prosecution, I have done that. I have given the document to General Dallaire.


MR. BÂ:
Thank you.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. General Dallaire, are you familiar with that document?

A. Yes, that document was mine.


MR. SEGATWA:
Thank you, Mr. President. Which document are we referring to? I do not have that document.


MR. BÂ:
That is a document tendered into exhibits (sic). You have received it. It is the cable of 11 January. You are now compelling me to say what it is, even though I did not want to say it.


MR. SEGATWA:
You had to say it, because we did not have the document. It is the first time I'm seeing this document.


MR. PRESIDENT:
This was produced through -- it was shown to the witness earlier. So if you say you had not seen it, you were not in court that day.


MR. MACDONALD:
No, we had seen it. We are all familiar with that, Your Honour.


MR. PRESIDENT:
So you will get a copy of that -- preparing that document.


MR. MACDONALD:
I am willing to go with that one, because I am familiar with that one, but the others, I'm not sure.


MR. BLACK:
To assist, which are we talking about? Because there are two; there is the original from New York and the other one they have changed which they have here. Are we being shown the original from New York or the one the Prosecution has changed?


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. General Dallaire, I will continue. What is the provenance of this document?

A. This is the situation report that -- I had the staff collect it and signed on the night of 7th of January. It is subsequent to the briefings I received from Colonel Marchal, on the informant Jean-Pierre?

Q. I did not clearly follow your answer. In any case, is the document dated?

A. Well, yes. It is dated -- it is the report that I sent to New York to DPKO on the evening of the 11th of January 1994.

Q. Who was the report intended for? To whom was it addressed?

A. It was addressed to major General Maurice Baril, who was the military adviser to secretary general working in DPKO.

Q. The content of the document you have in your possession now, is it the same as that which you cabled on the 11th of January? I will request you to look at the document closely.

A. Yes, I -- I see no difference. I mean, as best as I can recollect, the numbering or coding that we used inside of UNAMIR is on it, and the content is there. I don't see anything -- no, that seems to be the one that I sent, yes.

Q. Very well. After you sent the document, did you have any response from DPKO?


MR. MACDONALD:
I am sorry, Your Honour. Sorry.


THE WITNESS:
Yes.


MR. MACDONALD:
Is General Dallaire referring to a document that has been introduced into evidence? And if "yes", under which item? Because General Dallaire has got a document, we do not know what he is reading. We are assuming --


MR. PRESIDENT:
It is 67 -- what is the marking on it?


MR. MACDONALD:
What is the marking on that document so we can all follow?


MR. BÂ:
It is the Prosecution Exhibit 67.


MR. MACDONALD:
Sixty-seven? So, not the one introduced by Mr. Black with the date of 28 November 1995 on it?


MR. PRESIDENT:
He is referring to 67.


MR. MACDONALD:
Sixty-seven.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. General, when did you receive the answer?

A. I think -- sorry -- only a few hours later during the night, later on in the night. And it was still daytime or later afternoon, in New York. It was received and obviously staffed, and the response came very quickly.

Q. Thank you, General. Subsequently, did you -- did your men continue meeting Jean-Pierre?

A. Yes, even though I had received orders that I could not implement what I had proposed, I had not received orders to stop communicating with Jean-Pierre and so I continued to let the staff gather information from the individual in order to, at least, improve our knowledge of what was out there as we were receiving information from other sources also at the same time.

Q. In the same breath, did he give you evidence of what he was putting forward?

A. Well, yes -- we -- by the next day, already, I was able to send one of my officers of African descent to go into one of the sites that Jean-Pierre had told us that we would find a weapons cache. Weapons were found. It was, in fact, in the MRND headquarters building. At the time we were told it was rented to the party from General Ndindiliyimana. Subsequent to that, there were other confirmations of discussions that we had. In fact, on the request of the president, with leadership of the MRND party, Jean-Pierre was able to give us near verbatim information on these meetings that he had received separately from the president of the MRND.

Q. Thank you, General. When did your men stop seeing the informer, that is Jean-Pierre?

A. To the best of my recollection, it is -- oh -- in the latter part of January, I believe. I don't -- don't remember the exact date, I'm afraid.

Q. Thank you, General. We'll get back to Jean-Pierre later on. For now we'll move on to something else.

Were you able to set up those transitional institutions in the month of February 1994?

A. No. Several attempts were initiated. On each occasion I deployed several hundred troops in more tactical positions in order to assist in getting people to the CND (inaudible) ceremonies and on some occasions, the government people didn't appear. On other occasions, the RPF component or contingent didn't appear. On nearly every occasion there were significant riots or demonstrations around the CND and on many of the routes that we were taking to escort the people who had asked for escort and protection to the CND, and at times I had to prod the gendarmerie to take a more active role in trying to control those crowds. But in all the attempts we were totally -- and incompletely --unsuccessful in getting that transitional government in place.

Q. Thank you, General. Well, on the whole, how was February in Rwanda? Was it a calm month?

A. Because of the difficulty of bringing about the transitional government and the increased friction between different political tendencies on the government side in particular, we saw a rather significant increase in insecurity, particularly in and around the capital. That was exacerbated by the fact that the government was no more in a position to provide salaries to functionaries and teachers and the like. It was also due to people inciting people to riot, and we, on many occasions, saw the Interahamwe in their uniforms being very active therein. We had a number of assaults on what were deemed to be, as reported, more moderate members. There was a lot of events of the use of weapons or grenades, and, essentially, throughout the month the situation continued to degenerate to the extent that I believe on the 22nd of January we had a major meeting with the mayor of Kigali in trying to explain what was going on to the different bourgmestres in the capital because the government had tacitly refused to let us tell people what we were doing there, and what our roles were, and how we could assist them in advancing the peace process. And, so, it ended up by being a very long meeting in trying to calm things down.

The minister of defence was trying to move more troops into the capital which would have totally disabled the KWSA allotments and assignments because people had to remain in their positions due to the peace agreement. We also had the minister of defence establish a curfew, through which we attempted to create joint patrols with the gendarmerie to monitor it and assist them in implementing it.

Q. On that occasion, and following those acts of violence, was there any reaction from the prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana? Did she address the nation?

A. Yes. In fact, I remember there was one occasion where she did actually speak to the nation after I had met with her, and that is the -- in the second part of February, where she was so exasperated by one -- none of the MRND party ministers were coming to any of her cabinet meetings and were stalling anything that she was trying to introduce to attenuate the tensions that were ongoing. And, also, we were seeing her in a sort of a leadership, of course, role of trying to calm and inform the population that these frictions and this tension was something that -- that they had to be going through possibly -- or, was there as they tried to bring a solution to implement the already terribly late broad-based transitional government.

Q. Thank you, General.

Now, if I were to go by what you have written, in the month of March, you took a couple of days of vacation to go and visit your wife and children in Canada; am I mistaken?

A. No. I took a couple of weeks of vacation and we did not come to Canada. We went to another place where we linked up, and during that trip, also, stopped by in Canada to speak to people here and go on the vacation with my family.

Q. Thank you, General. When did you report back to your station in Kigali, if you remember?

A. I believe it is around the 30th of March. I think I left around the 10th or 11th and by then, both the minister of defence and I had looked at things and there had been a sudden calm that had come over Kigali and there was a lot less actions at night of people being attacked. There were no more riots of any real consequence and the situation sort of went into a sort of false -- I say "false" because it was so temporary -- phase of calm, and because the political scenario was still hung up and there were people were asking for more time to bring options to the table and the security seemed to be, at that time reasonably stable. The RPF leadership had moved back up to Mulindi, because nothing was moving on the political side. I felt I could go on leave at that time and maintain communications with my deputy.

Q. I heard in your answer "around the 13th of March"; is that what you said, general?

A. The 30th of March. I believe that is the date.

Q. Thank you. I had heard the 13th of March.

Were there any other attempts to set up those transitional institutions in the course of March?

A. Yes, there was at least one. I am not sure of two, but I know of one, and then there was quite a new factor that was introduced which was a significant shift in the sort of strategy of bringing a political solution, and the shift came about by, if I am not mistaken, the president introducing the idea of full and total joining in of all the possible factions in this political friction and essentially convinced everybody -- or seemingly, except of course the RPF, that the CDR party should be part of the negotiations even though they never had a person that would be allotted to any ministerial job at the BBTG and they had not signed neither the Arusha agreement nor the protocol, the ethics protocol, but that was introduced as an idea, and a number of people who surrounded the processes (inaudible) and so on, went along with it in attempting to maybe see if that option would help break the impasse that was ongoing in regards to, again, the division of jobs within the BBTG.

Q. So, how did you view the CDR party? What was its ideology? I mean, what political slant was being advocated by that party?

A. The CDR party, from the information we had, was an extremist Hutu, Hutu-Power type of party that was -- articulated an anti-Tutsi position and was dead against the implementation of the Arusha peace agreement and, in fact, that is why they ultimately never signed into it but remained a party in the periphery that we, every now and again, would hear about as part of the hard-line extremist point of view of what I think might have been a minority of Hutus.

Q. General, can I ask you to be brief in your answers. Including the CDR party, well, would that have been possible without an amendment to the Arusha Accords?

A. Well, that is -- in fact, one of the arguments that was ongoing at the time, is because they have not signed the accords, could they actually be introduced? And one of the factors was, I believe, the signing of the (inaudible) protocol, I think it was that. And, in fact, the CDR party said it would sign. And so there was an enormous amount of debate whether or not that permitted them to be part of the peace process in this concept of all inclusion in order to bring about a solution to the impasse. And, so, in my opinion, when I got back, I felt that that was merely a red herring because the CDR party was so blatantly anti-Tutsi and, by extension, anti-RPF in its expressions, and what we knew of it, and there was just no logic, in my opinion, as to how they would ever reconcile with the RPF who were also themselves difficult to manage at the time.

Q. Thank you, General. Now, within that KWSA agreement, Kigali weapons secure area, did -- upon your return to Rwanda at the end of March, did the RPF engage in securing those weapons that were in illegal hands?

A. Well, I had finally been able to convince New York DPKO that we should be conducting these arms cache raids. We had a lot of information on a lot of sites where the weapons were, including the whole town of the president where heavy weapons were reported to be. And, so I was allowed, then, to plan with the gendarmerie, but trying to remain at arm's length using our UN civpol people to start conducting some of these raids, and so when I got back we were able to start the planning and to do that at that time.

Q. That operation, prosecuted (sic) by our own forces together with the gendarmerie, was it successful? Did it make it possible for you to discover certain arms caches?

A. No, in fact, it was the -- quite the contrary. One, we felt that the gendarmerie had not deployed enough forces, nor in a proper fashion, to conduct the proper search and cordon off the area. And, secondly, there was nothing there and there was this sense that we had from the information, again, gathered here and there that the gendarmerie was infiltrated by hardliners, if not extremists, who potentially could have tipped off the people who had those weapons there. And, so, it was proposed that we would do another one on the 7th of April, but that we would inform only the chief of staff of the gendarmerie and that less than 24 hours beforehand, in order to reduce the number of people who would know what the target would be.

Q. Thank you, General.


MR. MACDONALD:
Do we know which date we are referring to? Are we referring to the 1st of April?


MR. PRESIDENT:
He said the 7th.


MR. MACDONALD:
No, that was the one that was supposed to be --


MR. BÂ:
No, Mr. President, the 7th was the second operation which was envisaged.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. Now, the first search operation occurred when, do you remember?

A. I think it was the 1st of April, yes.

Q. Thank you, General. Do you remember some particular event in which you participated in the night of the 4th of April?

A. Yes, what we had -- because of it was a multinational force, every now and again some contingents of my force would celebrate their national holidays and invite others to join in with them and add, on occasion, the population and some VIPs from the local community. And, so, on the 4th it was Senegal evening. It was more late afternoon -- or early evening, where they organised a party to which was invited all of the high-ranking personnel, political, military and so on, to join the troops and the mission in celebrating that evening.

Q. Did you meet Rwandan military officials there?

A. I don't remember too much the military. I'm maybe not too sure if General Ndindiliyimana was there. I know the chief of staff of the army was not there. I don't remember seeing him. Amongst the other people in particular, and nearly the most senior, I guess on the civilian side, was Colonel Bagosora who was the chef du cabinet minister of defence. There were other politicals there. I think there were a couple of other ministers there, but I really cannot remember who.

Q. Did you meet Colonel Bagosora there?

A. Yes. Well, during that evening, of course, I met a bunch of people and talked with a number, but we ended up at the buffet sitting down at the same table with the band playing and people around and so we had a chance to speak. And he was -- his wife was with him.

Q. Did Colonel Bagosora make any pronouncements on that occasion that you might have attached any importance whatsoever, significance whatsoever, or were these just some mundane remarks on his part?

A. The impression I had was that Colonel Bagosora had had a few drinks (inaudible) was quite verbose and talking about what we had heard on a number of occasions from colleagues of his and ministers, which was discussing the situation in the Great Lakes Region of a Tutsi hegemony that was sort of being in the process of ongoing with what happened in Burundi and the like. And in order to lighten up the conversation and put it in a sort of different perspective, I -- I asked him -- amongst the interruptions and so on, I asked him in their structure, having a president like they had, whether the president actually had a dauphin. Was there someone who was in the wings being prepared, subsequently, to take over? And that created a near violent reaction on his part, saying that there was only one president and there was no such other ideas of a replacement or anything of that nature. And he took it rather badly. And, then, I was interrupted and I was speaking to people and there was a lot of noise and so on and I subsequently found out through Colonel Marchal, and I don't have exactly when that happened, that Colonel Bagosora was talking in the more aggressive tone regarding the final solution to the political and national problems that they were having in Rwanda.

Q. Did Colonel Marchal report to you on the substance or purport of his discussion with Colonel Bagosora on the 4th of April or some other day?

A. Well, I did receive this information subsequently. It was not on the 4th, because we all went on our different ways and got caught up in a bunch of different things of course. On the 5th we were receiving the new mandate from the UN, which was putting a six-week limit on our force and creating all kinds of difficulties in regard to implementing the peace agreement, and then, on the 6th, attempting to interpret the new mandate and what it meant to us. And so, I don't remember when I was told that. I just remember getting the information. And, I must say that in the state of tension that had been created by this new initiative, well, introducing the CDR, we had a whole different atmosphere of insecurity that had all of a sudden been created. For me, leaving in the first part of March, when things sort of started getting -- but quieted down, when I got back the place was in an uproar. There had been assassinations. There had been more riots. The attempts of the BBTG had totally failed. There was a lot of attacks and abuses of the use of weapons at night, with grenades and so on. My own bungalow came under fire one night. And, so, we were in a state of fairly rapid deteriorating scenarios in regard to the security, to the extent that even before I left I had ordered the movement of about 250 Ghanaians from the north into Kigali to try to reinforce my situation there, which was becoming tenuous.

Q. Thank you, General. The 6th of April 1994, General, were you aware of the trip by President Habyarimana to Dar es Salaam? I'm putting this question in a direct manner because it is common knowledge.

A. Yes. We had -- we were aware that he had gone to meet the facilitator, who had been the president of Tanzania, that the regional heads were meeting in order to assist the UN in bringing about a solution to this political impasse that was ongoing in Rwanda.

Q. Thank you. Some other question -- direct one: On 6th of April in the evening, since it is a matter of common knowledge, how did you learn of the crash of the presidential aircraft?

A. Well, I had a report that an explosion had happened in Kanombe camp and received that at my headquarters, and, then, not long after that, received a call from Prime Minister Agathe who had indicated that the president's plane had been shot down -- not shot down, but had crashed. I don't remember her saying "shot down" but I know "crashed", that she was having serious concerns and what we proposed to do. Then she went off. We said we would call back. I know later on there was a call, before 10 o'clock. As I was getting -- starting to get reports coming from my headquarters and so on, of a situation of tension and what was going on at the -- at the airfield, that she said that she was trying to touch base with a number of her ministers, but she was in near impossibility of talking to them, and she wasn't able to get through to any of the MRND ministers at all.

Q. General, after the crash, that same day -- or, subsequent days, did you try to secure the scene just to maintain its existence pending some investigation, by somebody or by the international community?

A. If you are referring to the crash site, I did attempt to get some of my Belgian observers to the site in order to secure it in order to do the investigation but by the time they got there, which was not very long, the site was already secured by the Presidential Guard, because the crash site happened just beside the presidential palace which is right close to Camp Kanombe, so they could not even get close to the place. And, in fact, it took three weeks before; ultimately, we were allowed to get to the site when the Presidential Guard ultimately left the place.

Q. Did you ask members of the Rwandan government forces to have access to the site? Was there any refusal on their part?

A. I did ask even that night because, to my surprise, the senior French military adviser who was part of the military advisory team still there advising the the RGF relief units appeared at the headquarters where I had been, the army headquarters. He said he was prepared to conduct the investigations immediately, and I said that that would be unacceptable because of their past history of fighting with the RGP against the RPF, that there would be no credibility in such an investigation and that I was being -- getting in contact with a number of other countries, European and so on, who would send me a team fast enough to do such an investigation. By the next day, the RPF had agreed that they had no objection to somebody else coming in to do the investigation, but I never got authority from the government side to actually do it even after I requested it, and the Presidential Guard never left the site.

Q. General, on that evening of the 6th of April, did you meet Rwandan military authorities, that is authorities of the Rwandan government forces?

A. Shortly after 10 o'clock with the crash happening, if I am not mistaken, around just after 8 o'clock -- shortly after 10 o'clock, I got a phone call from (inaudible) Rwabalinda, a lieutenant colonel, who was the government forces liaison officer to my headquarters, a chap in which I had an enormous amount of confidence. And he asked me to join the senior officers who were in a meeting at the army headquarters in regards to the situation of the loss of not only the president, but also, the chief of staff of the army, and they were looking at what to do about it.

Q. Very well, General, we will come to that later on. Before going to the said meeting, assuming that you went to it, did you have contact with Mrs. Agathe Uwilingiyimana, I mean, telephone contact? Did you speak to her over the telephone?

A. Yes, I spoke to her from that headquarters because at one point in around the times 11:30 or twelvish something like that, I had asked the chairman of the meeting, Colonel Bagosora, to go and contact the SRC, Mr. Booh-Booh, in order to fill him in on the situation and get a feel for the political side of what was going on there. And while I was in that small office, there was a communication with Madam Agathe who was, again, very concerned about the fact that she could not establish any communications with anybody, that they had disappeared, run away or whatever, and that she was enormously concerned about what was going on.

And I am just racking my brain now. And, then, we talked about the situation in regards to this degenerating rapidly, and the kind of tension that could happen and we talked about her going on the radio station, something we had done before, and her speaking to the people very early in the morning in order to ensure that they saw that there was a political leadership structure in place and to keep people calm. I later on that night -- it was from my headquarters, now I am talking about three-thirtyish, 4 o'clock, we spoke again when I was trying to negotiate with the government radio station to have them accept her and come and do such an announcement.

Q. General, we'll come back a little. We'll come back to the meeting which held at the army headquarters. Who welcomed you and what was said during that meeting?

A. Well, when I arrived they were in the large conference room and which I had been in there before with the maps and everything, and it was a sort of a horse-shoe type of table with the open end near the door when you come in, and sitting there was -- I would not say a dozen, but close to that, a number of officers of which in the middle, and assuming the chairmanship was Colonel Bagosora. To his left was General Ndindiliyimana, to his right was the G3 operations of the government forces, I don't remember his name, and then a number of other officers sitting there.

Q. During the said meeting, did you talk to the soldiers about Agathe's intention to address the nation over the radio?

A. Yes. Sorry, I did not follow up with the second part of your question which was, what did we talk about? The discussion led by Colonel Bagosora was a discussion that was dominated by the arguments that they were a military structure attempting to guarantee or assure control of the situation in this sort of political vacuum with the president being killed, and that what they were trying to do was grasp the situation so it does not de-escalate into anarchy and ultimately hand it over to a political structure, to then have the civilian political control, at which point I indicated that, in my opinion, from previous experiences there, that Madam Agathe was still the prime minister and she seemed to be the ranking authority in the country, political authority, in the system of government in that sort of coalition time frame, that they should contact her and assist her in being able to bring about this political solution.

The response that I got to that on a number of occasions was quite vehemently contrary to my solution, with the argument that she had really no authority in as much as she couldn't get a hold of her cabinet; she was not able to really govern previously; that she did not have the respect of the population; and she was really a sort of nonentity in the political process, although she was still holding that full authority of prime minister up until that point.

Q. General, during that meeting -- or, you said that general Bagosora was there. Was General Ndindiliyimana also present?

A. Yes. The chief of staff of the gendarmerie was sitting to his left, essentially listening and acquiescing to what Bagosora was saying, not particularly intervening, although he did talk about what possibly might be worked out with getting some guards at certain vital points, which is the normal military procedure, like radio stations, TV stations, power stations, things of that nature, and that we should work out how we might be able to do that within the KWSA process.

Q. During the said meeting, did the soldiers talk to you about setting up a mechanism that would be responsible for managing the crisis -- a mechanism that would be responsible for managing the crisis, a military mechanism that would be responsible for managing the crisis? Did the soldiers talk to you about that?

A. Essentially, we were really talking about how they were going to be controlling through them the overarching authority in the country, until they would be able to bring about some sort of political body to take over from them, at what they said would be the soonest of opportunity and in that sort of scenario, with the fact that they were so adamantly against Madam Agathe from taking on a role, and then we knew where she was. She was one of the few on the phone; we did not have contact with anybody else. Their refusal of going down that road was leaving me with a bad taste, a taste in as much as I was wondering what were really their ambitions here; with a bunch of politicians of the cabinet not accounted for; the prime minister not being considered an option at all, were these guys lining up a coup d'etat, or were they sort of really trying to bring a solution but not willing to accept, you know, what, to me, was a blatant option which was the prime minister? And that's why I, then, asked them to back off. That is why I asked them --

Q. General, please a moment of interruption.

A. -- to finally contact the --

Q. General, my question was different. My question was: Did they talk to you that night about a military mechanism that would be responsible for managing the crisis? You could answer with a yes or no.

A. I would love to answer yes or no, but I'm afraid you will rarely get that in this sort of circumstance. The only thing I remember, and this is from what I can remember of the time was -- is that they were going to have a meeting of -- gathering all of the commanders in order to brief them on what was going on. That was not particularly unusual, but that was as best as I could remember of the situation.

Q. Thank you. On that night did you have observers at CND? And if yes, did you contact them?

A. Yes, through my deputy who had made his way to the headquarters we were in contact with the CND, which was a priority for me in as much as I absolutely wanted to keep the RPF leaders, who were there, junior as they were, but they were still our point of contact with the RPF informed of what was going on, and of what we were doing and possibly pass on any messages and so on that might be coming from the other ex-belligerents, the RGF.

Q. Thank you, General. Your observers who were present at the CND during that night, did they tell you that RPF troops left their base?

A. No. There was no report of movement of the RPF either from the CND -- nor did I get any reports from either UNAMIR on the Ugandan side or from my staff that were in the RPF zone. We had had over the previous weeks incidents where the RPF had penetrated the demilitarised zone and we had negotiated them back and we were keeping a fairly close watch on those regions, particularly in the Byumba area and on the east side of the DMZ.

Q. Thank you, sir. On the night of the 7th as well as on the morning of the -- on the night of the 5th -- on the night of the 5th as well as the morning of the 7th, were the KWSA accords respected by both parties; that is, by the RPF and the government forces?

A. The RPF stayed within the complete accord of the Arusha and the KWSA. The RGF -- there were units and, particularly, the Presidential Guard that had gone beyond its barracks and was setting up roadblocks already and moving about the city, and that continued extensively with some elements of the gendarmerie the next morning, early in the morning, as we could observe them going with lists in their hands as they were observed from one house to another specific house, where we could hear gunshots and then them sort of carrying on.

Q. We are going to get to that. We are going to get to that, General. We are going to get to that later on.


MR. TAKU:
Your Honours, we really object to the Prosecutor stopping General Dallaire halfway. If at the beginning he is not responding to a question, he can say "Stop". But when he is giving an answer which is of interest and which may help the Court and the Defence in explaining particular issues, it is not fair for him to stop him. At the moment he was taking the answer (inaudible) yet he can say something very very important.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes, Counsel, I think -- when you can say -- you can put a specific question and expect a specific answer, but when the witness says something I think it is not proper to stop him halfway.


MR. BÂ:
Thank you, Mr. President. I take due note of that.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. General, which are the units of the Rwandan armed forces that were concerned by this KWSA accords, that is, on the night of the 5th and the morning of the 7th?

A. By then the units that we had information on and seen were the presidential guards, the paracommandos of Kanombe, the reconnaissance battalion, and units like in Camp Kigali were on full alert having deployed heavy weapons and so on in defensive positions around their camps, and, also, the Presidential Guard had done around their camp but expanded it beyond it into the main thoroughfare there.

Q. Thank you. Before daybreak and on the morning of the 7th of April, did you receive any calls at your headquarters, calls coming from outside, in other words, calls coming from town in general?

A. Yes, if I may. I forgot to mention also that the air defence battalion around the airfield was also in full alert, and had fully armed their weapons systems against the KWSA. In response to your question of phone calls, we started to get fully swamped by calls for assistance from Rwandans, from Rwandan VIPs, from expatriates, and from my own civilian staff who felt terribly insecure and uneasy. And the phone calls were of desperation for us to go and get them, and to provide them with protection, that they were being attacked by gendarmerie and by army and by other units, mostly those two. And that they were fearful for their lives. And by mid-afternoon I had received information that some were actually at the end of the phone and we could hear the machine guns and the grenades going off and people dying at the end of the phone.

Q. Who are those who called you, in general? Who are those who called you asking for your assistance?

A. Those who called us -- there was a Lando, in particular, and his wife. In particular, there were a couple of the other people we were protecting, who were seeking protection. There were a couple of others who had not any protection from us. And I must say, I cannot remember the list of those, but they were senior people of which the tendency that we knew of were sort of the moderate side of the house, both Hutu and Tutsis. We also had the head of the Human Rights Commission who was seeking that. We had Faustin Twagiramungu who we were able to get at and bring into my headquarters by noon hour. But with a lot of others, we were simply not in a position to provide them -- Lando -- and they were subsequently killed that morning.

Q. General, on the morning of the 7th of April when and where and did you see Colonel Bagosora and General Ndindiliyimana for the first time; that is, on the morning of the 7th?

A. They proceeded from my headquarters around 9:30-ish or something of that nature, after having a series of meetings with my own staff and also gathering as much information as we could and -- plus briefing the UN in New York -- went to the heart of the city to go to the ministry of defence where I was expecting to meet Colonel Bagosora. There was no doubt in my mind that Colonel Bagosora was running the show the night before. He had come -- and I had to go and see Booh-Booh and had spoken for the group and was very much giving the impression of being in charge with the way people were talking, showing deference to him. And, so, I had to touch base with him to find out what was going on, particularly in view of the fact that the political meeting that was supposed to happen at 9 o’clock, where Bagosora was supposed to be with a number of the ambassadors plus Booh-Booh at the American embassy, failed. It failed because none of the ambassadors could make it through the already extensive roadblocks that had been thrown up here, there and everywhere else. And so it was crucial that we do have some contact with who was running the show -- or, at least the impression of who was running the show and so that is why I went to the city. And I got as far as Hôtel des Milles Collines, and then was stopped by Presidential Guard and reconnaissance units and then went on foot in defiance of them, saying that I was not allowed to go through. I went to the UNDP because we had heard that we had a very, very important VIP there and found no one. I made my way to the ministry of defence and there were some officers there and so on and troops -- and not too concerned, they were just there in their sort of defensive positions. They said no, that the meeting was not there. They thought it was at the army headquarters. And so I proceeded on foot, and then a major jumped and provided me with transport. And I made it to the army headquarters which was heavily defended, including reconnaissance vehicles deployed. He got out. They told him that it was not there, it was at the ESM, École superieur militaire, and we sped to the ESM, where, ultimately there were all kinds of people and the meeting was being held.

Q. General, my question is: That morning, when did you see Colonel Bagosora and General Ndindiliyimana again for the first time? When and where did you see them again for the first time that morning?

A. I'm sorry for being verbose and catching my breath. It is at that meeting in the ESM amphitheatre where when I walked in, Colonel Bagosora was at the podium speaking to the assembled senior officers, a whole bunch of them, there were at least 40 to 60 of them and General Ndindiliyimana sitting also at the small rostrum, but at a small table.

Q. You said that you met Colonel Bagosora speaking to the people who were there; is that what you said?

A. Yes. When I walked in and caught them rather by surprise, he was speaking to them in Kinyarwanda and giving what seemed to be quite authoritative instructions or information. I -- when he noticed me, he immediately stopped and then approached me, and asked me to join General Ndindiliyimana there, to sit down. And as he finished briefing, spoke a bit in French about the creation of a crisis committee, about bringing about a -- of bringing about a statement by that afternoon, of generally keeping control on their people, and he invited me, then, to speak, and General Ndindiliyimana just sat there and observed. I spoke to the troops about what was the situation, saying that we were staying, although I had already seen two of my Belgian soldiers as casualties as I drove by Camp Kigali. And I was determined that I was going to stay and continue to try to implement the Arusha Peace Accords and assist them and regain control of the situation.

(1930H)

BY MR. BÂ:

Q. After Colonel Bagosora spoke, and after your own speech, did you talk with Colonel Bagosora or with General Ndindiliyimana?

A. Well, the -- when he took over the rostrum again from me, he informed the officers there, if I remember well, to continue to do their duty and accomplish their mission with their troops, sort of thing. And then it ended abruptly and in that sort of ending, he took off across the room and a whole -- a bunch of officers moved forward. And so in the very rapid mêlée, General Ndindiliyimana was beside me and I mentioned to him that I had seen some of my soldiers in Camp Kigali, and what was going on there, and what was the sort of situation?

I was quite encouraged, however, that those I knew as moderates who were at the meeting also, like Rusatira, came immediately forward and was given not only the task of creating that statement, but also came forward and was most encouraging in us staying and assisting.

Q. Okay. General, you said you turned to General Ndindiliyimana to talk to him about the situation of your men. What was his answer? What did he tell you?

A. The response, to my best recollection, was that the situation was getting in hand, that is to say that they were looking into it, that there had been a -- how do you say it in English? A -- not quite a riot, but a complete chaos in that camp, that people were trying to get a grip of the situation and that's what they were on to and they were going to sort it out. In so many words -- I mean, words to that effect.

Q. You also said that in his speech, Colonel Bagosora spoke of the creation of a crisis committee. Would you know who would be in charge of, that is, the chairman of that crisis committee?

A. Yes, the chairman of the crisis committee was identified as General Ndindiliyimana. I considered that fine, I mean, he was a ranking general officer at the time, and for him to run the crisis committee made all kinds of sense.

Q. Okay. After that meeting, General, what did you do? When did you leave that meeting, at about what time? And what did you do after leaving that meeting?

A. It were noonish, or around that time frame, and I had sat in on the crisis committee -- or, sorry, on the sub-committee under Rusatira that were trying to put the statement together, because I thought that was very important. But it was going nowhere and they were fiddling and talking and so on, and I felt that one, Bagosora had left, and Ndindiliyimana was caught up with that, so I decided I would go to the ministry of defence where Bagosora's office is, because even though Ndindiliyimana was the head of the comité de crise, that still left Bagosora, who had been running the show until then, and where do we go from here? And so I decided to go to the ministry of defence; I got the same transport to go there.

When I got there, there was just a few officers and so on, some guards, but no one else was there. And that permitted me then to get on the phone and start to re-establishing communications with my headquarters that I had lost for nearly, oh, jeez, nearly two hours.

Q. Okay. When you got in touch with your headquarters --


MR. TAKU:
(Microphones overlapping)... to interrupt. You did ask him when he left the meeting; he has not answered. When he left that meeting, that crisis meeting at ESM. He hasn't given an answer. He said he left and the circumstances; he has not stated when he left that meeting.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Ask him if he could remember the time when he left the meeting.


MR. TAKU:
You asked the question, and he didn't answer. He answered something else. So I just want that -- I want him to give the answer.


MR. BÂ:
You might want me to answer in his stead.


BY MR. BÂ:

Q. General, could you tell us, if you do recall, when approximately you left the meeting at the ESM?

A. Yes, I did indicate noonish. Forgive me, that's a sort of a slang here. It's around 12 o'clock. I don't remember, plus or minus 20 minutes or so, but it was in that time frame. By the time I got to the ministry of defence it was lunch hour.

Q. Thank you. Did you get in touch with your headquarters, with your observers who were stationed at various places? That is, when you left the ESM.

A. Yes, I asked a young lieutenant there at the headquarters to let me have access to a phone, and there was a phone not far from Colonel Bagosora's office. And so I started to phone, but of course the phones were terribly busy, but I was able to get through to my headquarters and talk with my deputy who brought me up to speed with a number of critical incidents that were going on, confirming that we had a number of soldiers that were missing, we had a number of soldiers that were held under armed control, like at the airport where they were surrounded. I had other soldiers who had disappeared, clearly they had -- we didn't know where they were. I had military observers who had gone and left their posts.

And the most crucial part is that there was -- the section that was protecting Madam Agathe was in Camp Kigali and that the -- they expected that there were casualties, they weren't sure of how many were dead or killed, but they were talking 11, 13. I mean, there was -- numbers were floating around as they were trying to get to grips on where everybody was.

He told me he was in contact with the RPF and they were still in their compound. And then he had a couple of messages -- or, a message from Kagame to pass on. And generally speaking, they were preparing a situation report so that I could send to New York as soon as possible to give them the information of what was going on.

Q. At that point in time, had you been informed of the fate of Madam Agathe? Were you already aware of what had occurred to her?

A. No, I -- I was able to affirm that she -- from what they were telling me, that she was in the UNDP compound and not the UNDP headquarters, which is a place just down the road from where the ministry of defence was, where a number of UNDP staff, I think expatriate staff were -- lived.

And with that information, and with nobody else around, I was able to get my vehicle back with my other staff. We checked communications on the radio, which was saturated with all kinds of reports of people seeking support, seeking help, seeking information. And so I went down the road, I don't know, 100 metres or two, and found the compound of the UNDP staff, because it was painted in UN colours, pounded on the door, opened it up -- they opened up and one of my officers was there, a Senegalese captain, and oh, a good 20 very hysterical and -- staff who all started to talk at the same time but essentially were trying to tell me what happened that morning, where Madam Agathe and her husband had been -- had found refuge from jumping over the wall, the Presidential Guard had come in, found them, killed them, and dragged them, taken them away. And then they went into another sort of building, I forget exactly the layout, and into a very dark room, in the cupboards, Madam Agathe's children were hiding.

Q. Thank you, General. The people you talked to, were they able to tell you who had practiced that physical assault on Madam Agathe, those who had assassinated her? Please, you can keep it brief. We don't need a lengthy answer.
A. Yes, they said it was the Presidential Guard.
Q. Okay, very well. General, between midnight on the 6th of April and might we say 3 p.m. on the 7th of April, was some gunfire from the CND or directed at the CND, was that observed?

A. I know I took an alternate route, a lower route. There was gunfire, but there was no -- I don't remember seeing -- I didn't go by there so I couldn't say, nor did I get any reports of movements of troops out of the CND. But there was gunfire, and the rather interesting tactical scenario, when you look at the terrain, was that the Presidential Guard camp was not very far from the CND, and that the gunfire was coming from that direction.

Q. So, from which direction was the gunfire coming? You talked about the Presidential Guard, you've talked about the CND, so there are two spots now. So the gunfire was coming from where?

A. Well, as best as I can remember the reports, the gunfire was coming from the general area of beyond the Presidential Guard camp, which is near due west -- no, sorry, south-west of the CND, and as such has, in certain areas, a pretty clear line of fire on the CND complex.

Q. Thank you. General, in the afternoon of the 7th of April, did you get in touch with Mr. Paul Kagame, or did you receive any message from him?

A. I received a series of messages from him -- four, I believe -- in which he was informing me that they were receiving all kinds of information that people that they were familiar with, people of Tutsi extraction, were being specifically targeted and fearing for their lives, and there were people being killed in Kigali. He then indicated that he had and was more than prepared to send a battalion, and even two at one point, to come and reinforce the RGF in order to help them regain control of the city and wrest it away from what Colonel Bagosora and General Ndindiliyimana were saying, rogue units like the Presidential Guard, the reconnaissance regiment, the paracommandos and the like. And of course he also informed me that if the situation was not brought under control, that he would be compelled to take action on his own with his forces. And then the last message was one of a series of points that he gave to me, essentially reaffirming that if the Presidential Guard and those units were not brought under control, that he would find himself in an obligation to take action.

I passed on certainly the message in which he offered up battalions to reinforce the units in the capital to stop the rogue units, that is, the Presidential Guard and so on, to General Ndindiliyimana and Bagosora in their office while we spent the afternoon together, when they came back as of about 2 o'clock, and that got quite a violent reaction, of course, saying that they were going to sort it out and they didn't need them. And of course it would have been, for a military side, a near impossibility for them to be able to come down because they would have had to go through the RGF lines, and that would have been seen as aggression, and then they would have had to sort of fight their way down.

Q. Do you recall when you received the last message from Paul Kagame, approximately?

A. Oh, it was past 3 o'clock. Maybe closer to 3:30, something like that. And I'm really pushing my memory, I'm afraid, at this point.

Q. Thank you, General. At or about 2 p.m. on the 7th of April, were you informed of an abduction or murder of some Rwandan authorities?

A. I was getting information through the radio and over the phone, but the reports I was getting were simply confirming the same information I'd been receiving a bit before we left, of course, and then subsequently of people being specifically target -- targeted, people running for their lives. And, just as a point, by then, my UN sites, places like Hôtel des Mille Collines and the Amahoro stadium and so on were being swamped by people trying to escape and find security within the compounds that the UN offered.

Q. Okay, at that point in time were you aware of the whereabouts of the prime minister-designate, Faustin Twagiramungu?

A. Yes, I had received information from my headquarters -- I think it's from my deputy -- that Colonel Marchal had, by (unintelligible), was able to get the prime minister-designate, and he was in my headquarters.

Q. Thank you. General, after the meeting at the ESM, and you said you left at about midday, midday-thirty, did you see Colonel Bagosora and General Ndindiliyimana that same day?

A. Yes, of course. I waited around at headquarters there --

Q. When --

A. -- they arrived, first Bagosora, and then General Ndindiliyimana around 2 o'clock.

Q. Where did you see them again?

A. Well, I mean, we spend the next two hours or two-and-a-half hours together, the three of us, mostly in Colonel Bagosora's office with General Ndindiliyimana essentially sitting there on the sofa, and I'm coming in and out from the little office that I was using to phone to my headquarters. And then around 4ish or so Colonel Bagosora took off, ostensibly trying to sort out my problems of my Belgian soldiers in Camp Kigali, which he categorically refused me the authority to go there, and said that the situation was (unintelligible) and they were getting it under control and they were going to sort it out, and they have my Belgian soldiers in that circumstance.

I still had other Belgian soldiers at other places that were still not found, or were still being held by gunfire or gun control by the government forces, so it wasn't just them.

And then -- so around 4ish or something, Colonel Bagosora leaves and there's a time frame where I am doing work with -- at my vehicle and so on, and then by 6 o'clock we had the meeting of the comité de crise at the headquarters, the army headquarters --

Q. General, before you continue. You say that you stayed with them in Colonel Bagosora's office for, say, two-and-a-half to three hours. Did you discuss with them while you were all together?

A. They -- the time that we spent together -- and it was more two-ish hours, I would suspect -- we talked about the situation, of course, my soldiers, which interestingly enough, a little later on Colonel Bagosora raised for the first time of anybody on the government side the fact that because RTLM was announcing that the Belgians had shot down the presidential plane, that it would be high time and to the best advantage of all that the Belgians be sent home and get them out of the place, as they would create more problems than solve them.

We discussed, and I continued to negotiate with the RPF leaders at the CND, the opportunity of Bagosora and Ndindiliyimana discussing with them how to ensure that we could continue with the Arusha agreement, how they could convince the RPF that they were getting the situation in hand, and ultimately prevent the RPF from having an excuse to bust out of their compounds and to launch potentially what would end up by being a civil war, and thus destroy any possibility of Arusha coming about.

So at that time there was that, I was on the phone, there was at least one visitor that they spoke with, a colonel that I saw leaving with the door closed, and that kept things going.

But what was of note, I think, was the fact that I had never seen more calm people in charge of something in my life. I mean, even professionals who are in a significant complex operation where they don't hold control, or seemingly control on all that's going on, are certainly far more on the phone, far more having meetings, having people come in and out, having messages being relayed and so on. And in fact it was quite the contrary. General Ndindiliyimana was just sort of sitting there, aloof and acquiescing to what Colonel Bagosora might be saying, and Colonel Bagosora was essentially doing paperwork, answering the phone on occasion, but with a calmness that was so disarming, that either they were totally out to lunch and didn't have a clue what was going on, or they were in total control of what was going on and that something was simply being implemented.

Which then brought out my concerns of whether or not -- of the previous evening that I was in the midst of a coup d'état was actually going on. Because then we didn't have Agathe anymore, she'd been targeted and killed, none of the other ministers were available, Faustin had no authority because he was the PM-designate of the transitional government so he had absolutely no authority, and nobody had said that they actually had a government structure in hand, although at one point Bagosora did indicate that they were working on getting some political people together and they hoped by the next day or next couple of days that'd be worked out.

Q. Maybe I should ask one last question, then we will end for today.

General, while you were in Bagosora's office, did you succeed in establishing contact with the CND? I mean, while you were in the office, I'm not talking about outside.

A. Yeah, well, I -- I was able to get through to the CND with my liaison staff and spoke to Seth -- oh, I forget -- forgive me, I will just check his name because I always get it mixed up -- Sendashonga, who was there with Tito Rutaremara and Dr. Jean, but I forget his last name. They were the three interlocutors on the political side that had stayed (unintelligible). And so they were the link with the RPF. And so I had asked them if they were prepared to talk with Colonel Bagosora and Ndindiliyimana; they agreed.

I had them call the office of Colonel Bagosora, got the number, they called, Colonel Bagosora spoke very tersely, just a few words, and then handed the phone to General Ndindiliyimana, who spoke a little longer, but in the end the conversation terminated with them saying that essentially they were asking the impossible in as much as they wanted the Presidential Guard arrested and all the units brought back into -- into immediate control, and that the KWSA and those sort of arrangements all get back to normal. And they said that they were doing their best but they couldn't guarantee that in any way, shape, or form, and that sort of ended it right there.

And to me that was the last possible straw of saving Arusha, unless the RPF would remain in their compound and north of the DMZ, and wait until we continued to try the solve the problem of the rogue units in Kigali and stop the killing. And that went out the window at about 20 past 4 when my staff called me to say that the RPF had busted out of the CND, they had been under constant fire, and they were in vulnerable positions and so they had to redeploy in order to give themself more protection. And then I found out later on that the RPF had also crossed the DMZ.


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yeah, we will stop.


MR. BÂ:
Mr. President, I think we can stop here. We can stop here and then we will resume tomorrow. When do we resume tomorrow?


MR. PRESIDENT:
Tomorrow we will be resuming at 3 p.m. Arusha time. 3 p.m. Arusha time, because the courthouse is being occupied by some other court. So the court will be given to us only at 3. We will resume at 3.

Registrar --


MR. BÂ:
And we will sit until when?


MR. PRESIDENT:
Until 8.


MR. BÂ:
Thank you.


MR. PRESIDENT:
The documents that were given by Mr. MacDonald today to be placed on record, okay? Is that the only document that we got?


MR. MACDONALD:
This is the letter, Your Honour, of November 20th?


MR. PRESIDENT:
Yes.

MR. PRESIDENT:
Court is adjourned until 3 p.m. tomorrow.


(Court recessed at 2000H)









C E R T I F I C A T E

We, Kirstin McLean, Leslie Todd, Sithembiso Moyo, and Eleanor Bastian, Official Court Reporters for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, do hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings in the above-entitled cause were taken at the time and place as stated; that it was taken in shorthand (stenotype) and thereafter transcribed by computer; that the foregoing pages contain a true and correct transcription of said proceedings to the best of our ability and understanding.

We further certify that we are not of counsel nor related to any of the parties to this cause and that we are in nowise interested in the result of said cause.


___________________________ Kirstin McLean


___________________________ Leslie Todd


___________________________ Sithembiso Moyo


___________________________ Eleanor Bastian
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