By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 11 -- Even as the UN's International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda brings its work to a close, with several indictees still at large and the FDLR still active in Eastern Congo, the ICTR will not return the archives back to Rwanda.
Inner City Press asked ICTR prosecutor Hasan Bubacar Jallow why even the "public" archives will not be returned.Video here, from Minute 20:36.
Jallow said that the confidential archives cannot be given to "any national jurisdiction," due to "potential risk to witnesses." Video here, from Minute 21:28.
He said that some of this becomes public in "ten or fifteen or twenty" years, and that national prosecutors can apply to the Residual Mechanism judges to see if they can access the material.
Meanwhile here is what Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky at noon on June 10:
Inner City Press: it’s been reported that a UN paid adviser to Mary Robinson is one Frederico Borello, he was part of the mapping report, but he was also wrote something called Re-making Rwanda, in which from many people’s point of view he expressed a clear view on the issues between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. So is it possible to know whether Mr. Borello has been hired as an adviser to Mary Robinson, [if so] how the hiring was made and what the response would be to the concerns that some in Rwanda are raising?
Spokesperson Nesirky: I’ll check with my colleagues in Political Affairs on that.
Twenty four hours later, there had still been no answer to the simple question of whether Borello is now on the UN payroll or not, as an adviser to the Dublin-based Mary Robinson.
And Nesirky did not call on Inner City Press to ask any question at the June 11 noon briefing, abbreviated for the presentation of ICTR prosecutor Jallow. Inner City Press ran out to try to ask a question of UK ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, who did not take it, video here at Minute 5:29, but arrived back in the Press Briefing Room while another was being allowed a second question. Watch this site.