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Mastermind of Rwandan Genocide Convicted

December 20, 2008 1:17 PM

HILARY BROWN, Correspondent, ABC News London

There was one item of good news from the African continent this week. That was the conviction  of Colonel Theoneste Bagosora by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Bagosora was found guilty of being one of the masterminds behind the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Six years after Bagosora first took the stand, the tribunal’s judges ruled that, as chief of staff in the Rwandan Defense Ministry in 1994, he was responsible for forming, training and arming the notorious Interahamwe, the Hutu militia that went on the rampage in the spring of 1994 against the Tutsi minority. Bagosora was also found to be responsible for drawing up target lists of prominent Tutsis and moderate Hutus who believed in  peaceful tribal coexistence. In his trial, Bagosora consistently denied there was any conspiracy and characterized the killings as "a spontaneous eruption of ethnic hatred."  He admitted that the killings were "excessive" but asserted that "they do not amount to genocide." 

Outside of Rwanda and the Rwandan Tribunal (which is based in the Tanzanian town of Arusha), very few people have heard of Bagosora, or of the 29 other war criminals convicted so far  by the tribunal . But most people have heard of the genocide in Rwanda, a slaughter in the space of 100 days between April and July in 1994. The victims were butchered with machetes in their own homes, herded into churches and burned alive, stopped at army roadblocks and shot on the spot. The killing fields stretched from the capital of Kigali to every corner of  the small, once-beautiful  country.

The bloodbath ended only when the Tutsi rebel group based in Uganda, the RPF, invaded Rwanda and put the Hutu Interahamwe militia to flight. They fled across the border into Goma, in neighboring Zaire, along with  hundreds of thousands  of panic-stricken Hutu civilians who had been part of the massacres and who feared the Tutsi’s revenge. At its height, the surge of people across the border reached 12,000 an hour. 

Since it was set up  in Arusha in  1995, the  U.N. Tribunal has detained more than 70 suspected war criminals and convicted almost 30, including a former prime minister, former mayors, journalists and priests. The best-known was Jean Kambanda, the former prime minister jailed for life for crimes against humanity in September 1998. Former Mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu was convicted of mass torture, rape and murder in October 1998 and sentenced to life. The journalist Ferdinand Nahimana, co-founder of Radio Mille Collines, was convicted of war crimes in December 2003 and sentenced to 30 years. 

But in spite of these convictions, many involved in the genocide are still free, living comfortably  under new identities. The tribunal names at least 13 suspected war criminals who are still at large.

Bagosora himself was picked up in Cameroon in 1997 where he must have thought he was safe. Apart from responsibility for the wholesale slaughter of his compatriots, he was also found guilty of the murder of 10 Belgian peacekeepers in Rwanda just before the genocide started. In the cold, dispassionate demeanor he maintained throughout his trial, he said: "I never killed anybody, nor did I give orders to kill." The court did not believe him.

When one considers some of the great genocides of the 20th century, it is too often the case that those responsible –- Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot -– are either allowed to die in their beds, or kill themselves with one clean, painless shot. In Rwanda at least, the monsters, some of them, have been made to pay for their atrocious crimes. 

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December 20, 2008 in Hilary Brown | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

High Fashion Inside a Milan Prison

September 08, 2008 1:56 PM

By HILARY BROWN, ABC News, Milan

Think of Milan and you think of fashion, high fashion -- at least that’s what you do if you’re female. You think of the famous catwalk where the most beautiful clothes in the world are shown on the world’s most beautiful women.   

But there’s another catwalk in Milan  where  the fashions are almost as lovely. It’s in San Vittore prison, and the clothes are all made by convicts.

The inmates -- all women -- are part of a training program that’s turned out to be a model of rehabilitation. They have learned to sew anything, including costumes for the famous La Scala Opera House. Once a year, the prison organizes a fashion show of its creations, with professional models strutting up and down the ramp.   

"We have learned to make anything and everything," Gabriella Piedi tells me as she handstitches a perfect hem on a bias-cut silk skirt. She’s doing time for  drug dealing. "You work all day, and you know it’s giving you a future."   

Half a dozen other convicts are bent over sewing machines, pressing seams or marking and cutting cloth, in a bright, sunlit room that could be any tailor’s workshop. Most of the convicts are serving prison terms of five years or more.

But after this type of training, any jailbreak they might have in mind is not against the law. They want to break into the world of fashion.

Backed by a local cooperative that helps women behind bars, they are now launching their own label called 'Gatti Galleotti,' which means "jail cats." 

They’re starting small, with a line of aprons, shirts and other small things that can be easily sold as souvenirs...by the cooperative.

But their goal is to produce their own line of high-quality, boutique clothes under the Gatti Galleotti label. Already they have a contract with a fashionable  shop in Milan, making exquisite, handmade suits, blouses, dresses and lingerie.

"The whole collection is made by them, from the jackets to the underwear," says Donna Ioannou, the shop’s owner, as she takes me through rack after rack of clothes made in the finest silks, wools and cottons. The clothes are all of her own design, but she has no doubt that the convicts would be perfectly capable of designing and producing a line of their own that would be just as good.

"I’m sure they could do that," she says. "I think it’s inspirational for them to do what they are doing."

The convicts hope to be able to launch the prison’s first-ever fashion line within a year. "We’re going to try," says Paola Mazzini, a middle-aged woman who has been an inmate of San Vittore prison for 10 years. "We’ll give it our best."   

And their best is really very good. I bought one of their pieces myself, and it’s been quite a hit.

Watch Hilary Brown's piece for more about Gatti Galleotti.

September 8, 2008 in Hilary Brown | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

What Baghdad Needs Is a Ferris Wheel

August 26, 2008 1:56 PM

By HILARY BROWN, ABC News Baghdad

‘Forget about electricity and running water, what Baghdad needs is a ferris wheel. And its gotta be the biggest in the world.’

That, in essence, is the latest Big Idea to come from the men of Baghdad City Council.

They have invited tenders, from inside Iraq and abroad, for a giant ferris wheel (at least 600 feet high) to be set in its own complex of restaurants, casinos, and playgrounds, right in the heart of Baghdad.

‘Any person who goes into it will be able to see the whole of Baghdad,’ says the Baghdad Municipality press release, adding that the ferris wheel will be much higher than the London Eye (which is a mere 410 feet off the ground), and will be able to take 40 people in each pod.

In the five and a half years since the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq has produced feelings of shock and awe, pity and terror, outrage and horror, but never has a news item evoked pure and simple ridicule.

That Baghdad’s town councillors think a giant ferris wheel should be a priority for their bombed-out city is beyond belief. There must be a hundred better ways to spend public money.

Take the public services, which in Baghdad is a contradiction in terms.

Most people in the city are still limited to less than an hour of electricity a day, which comes on without warning, usually in the middle of the night. People then leap out of bed, put on the washing machine, the iron, the cooker, the fridge, the fan and all the other modern conveniences that make life bearable.

The rest of the time, they boil to bits (it’s currently 115 degrees here). If they can afford it, they buy a generator, or club together with their neighbours to buy one for the street or the apartment building.

The water supply is even worse.

In many neighbourhoods there is no tap water at all. People actually dig down into the city’s underground water pipes and pump out what they can. 

Surely the restoration of public utilities is what the Baghdadis really need, not a ferris wheel that would only give them a depressing, bird’s eye view of  a field of dun-coloured ruins, blast walls and pot-holed, filthy streets.

Make no mistake, they’ve got the money. Thanks to the increase in oil prices, Iraq has the money.

According to the General Accounting Office, Iraq has accumulated 156 billion dollars in oil revenues from 2005 to the present. Yet last year, it spent only 28 percent of its own reconstruction budget, preferring, perhaps, to let the U.S. taxpayer continue to pay for rebuilding (approximately 48 billion dollars has been spent since the invasion). 

It’s true that reconstruction is difficult when there’s a shortage of qualified engineers and technicians (many have fled the country) and when conditions are often just too dangerous for those who have remained.

But the overall level of violence has gone down dramatically here, thanks to the so-called ‘Surge' of U.S. troops in 2006, the ceasefire called by the Shiite leader Moqtada al Sadr, and the estimated 90,000 former Sunni insurgents who are now being paid by the Americans to patrol their own areas and report on al Qaeda activity.

And that brings another terrible thought to mind. The Baghdad Ferris Wheel could be an irresistible target for terrorists.

August 26, 2008 in Hilary Brown | Permalink | User Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)