20100529
all africa

Kigali — Rwanda has said an American lawyer intending to represent the embattled opposition politician Victoire Ingabire was arrested for "negating and denying" the 1994 genocide.

Chief prosecutor Martin Ngoga told the Sunday Monitor, a Nation Media Group publication, that both acts were criminal offences in Rwanda's jurisdiction and that, Prof Peter Erlinder, the American lawyer, would be prosecuted.

Rwanda police had earlier confirmed that Mr Erlinder was arrested on Friday over the allegations.

Mr Erlinder flew into Rwanda one week ago to defend embattled aspiring presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, who herself was arrested and released on bail in April over accusations of supporting a terrorist group and promoting ethnic divisions and genocide ideologies.

Said Mr Ngoga: "Mr Erlinder denied the genocide."

"Because of our history, denying the genocide is a criminal offence," he added.

In April, Mr Erlinder filed a lawsuit in the US alleging that the current Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered the shooting down of a plane carrying then-leader Juvenal Habyarimana, an event that triggered the bloodshed in which over 1.2 million Rwandans perished 16 years ago.

Mr Erlinder's accusations were contrary to investigative findings by UK ballistic experts that indicated that the plane was shot by Hutu extremists.

The American lawyer has previously worked as the lead defence counsel of several renown Rwandan genocide suspects at the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Under a 2003 law, persons condemned for denying or grossly minimising genocide, attempting to justify genocide or destroying evidence related to it are liable to imprisonment for a term between 10 and 20 years.

Though Mr Erlinder arrived in Rwanda to prepare for Ms Ingabire's trial, an umbrella group of genocide survivors called IBUKA protested and said his presence in Rwanda "hurts" the feelings of the survivors, and undermines Rwanda as a state.

"Accepting him in the country is continuing to hurt the survivors in total disregard of the painful past," IBUKA said in a statement.

The arrest of the American lawyer comes just days after a top US diplomat for Africa, Mr Johnnie Carson, sent a protest note that the Barack Obama administration expected a "speedy, fair, and transparent trial" for opposition politician Ingabire Victoire.

Mr Carson told a congregational hearing last week that the political environment ahead of the poll "has been riddled by a series of worrying actions" by the government in Kigali.

He said that some actions taken "appeared to be attempts to restrict the freedom of expression".

Rwanda dismissed the concerns as "an out-of-Rwanda reading of the situation."