Chief of prosecutions named
2005-05-09 15:27
Arusha, Tanzania - An American lawyer has been appointed to oversee all prosecutions at the UN-mandated international court trying the main suspects in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, officials said on Monday.
Stephen Rapp, who successfully argued for the 2003 convictions on genocide charges of several leading Rwandan journalists, was named Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), they said.
ICTR Prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow announced the appointment in a statement released as the tribunal attempts to speed up its notoriously slow pace to finish its work in the next three years.
"Mr Rapp is expected to see to the effective presentation in the trial chambers of the cases against those bearing the greatest responsibility for the Rwandan genocide in a manner that will permit trials to be concluded by the end of 2008 as projected by the ICTR completion strategy," Jallow said.
Rapp, a former US attorney from the Midwestern state of Iowa, took up his new duties on May 5 and succeeds Briton Melanie Werrett, who resigned from the post last year.
The ICTR was set up in 1994 to try the main suspects in the genocide in which some 800 000 mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.
To date, it has convicted 22 suspects and acquitted three.