20120418
AFP
The lawyer for a detainee at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has filed an motion to block his client's transfer to Rwanda, a court official said Tuesday.

A defence lawyer for Jean Bosco Uwinkindi, accused of planning and coordinating in the 1994 genocide, said by blocking crucial defence evidence in a separate trial this week Rwandan courts proved they are not credible.

The lawyer, Claver Sindayigaya, cited the ongoing trial in Kigali of opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, charged with terrorism and denying the genocide.

Ingabire decided on Monday to boycott her trial after the court cut short a defence witness who accused Rwandan authorities of rigging evidence against her.

Sindayigaya said the developments in Ingabire's case proved his client could not get a fair hearing in Kigali and moved to block his transfer from the ICTR, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania.

"The defence counsel has filed today an extremely urgent motion for a stay of the Uwinkwindi transfer to Rwanda," ICTR spokesman Roland Amoussouga said Tuesday.

"They want also to request time to file a second motion for reconsideration of the decision of December 16th 2011 on appeal against the return to Rwanda."

Uwinkindi was pastor of the pentecostal church in Kanzenze, a rural Kigali area during the genocide.

He is accused of leading a group of Hutu extremists on a hunt to murder Tutsi civilians.

The ICTR previously ordered that Uwinkindi's be transfered to Rwanda on April 18, which, if executed, would be the ICTR's first-ever transfer of a genocide suspect to a Kigali court.

The transfer will go ahead unless the ICTR's appeals court blocks it.