I would advise this ” international criminal law consultant” to read my entire argument in my masterpiece on what’s called Tutsi genocide. He should be able to find it. My comment on Dr. Rudasingwa’s doc was a highlight of one of the segments of my argument; shooting down the plane.
In the alternative, he should have learn mastered the concept of legal impossibility. It’s not a legal requirements – in drafting – that legal impossibility (ies) for a crime is/are included in the elements of a crime. For example, no criminal code makes ” impotence” an element of the crime called rape. However, if it’s proven that the accused was impotent at the time of the alleged crime, there is legal impossibility and so the case collapse.
I wish this ” international law consultant ” read just a little bit of the philosophical foundations of the crime of genocide. He should have learned that it cannot be genocide if the massacres are sparked off; genocide requires proof of planning/a plan.I would have advised the author to read Lemkin’s work.
I don’t know whether the author the author knows the rationale for prosecuting the crime of genocide in a pyramid; planners ( at the apex) and executors ( for the people down the pyramid).
Did the author note that in Military 1 and Military 11, a bigger part of the indictment and charges dealt with ” planning” which prosecution failed to prove? I guess the ” international consultant” shows or should know that evidence of ” planning” which was presented in Military 1 and 11 would have been irrelevant if ” planning” was not required!
Even if one went with the ordinary ” but for” in criminal law, how would one argue that the person responsible for the ” but for” is not responsible for the substantive crime?
If, as I know it, downing Habyarimana’s plane triggered the massacres, then (a) those massacres cannot be called genocide and (b) the person who downed the plan is responsible for the massacres. I am troubled to learn that an ” international criminal law consultant”, whatever that means, does not seem to appreciate this basic criminal law principle.
Dr Charles Kambanda
