Once, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire had to shake the devil's hand. Yesterday, he set out to make the demons of Rwanda pay.
General Dallaire, the Canadian who led UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, has returned under tight security to Africa to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in Arusha, Tanzania. He is a prosecution witness in the trial of Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, the Rwandan chief of staff who, with three military colleagues, stands accused of orchestrating genocide.
Col. Bagosora is accused of masterminding the rampage in which an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis and some moderate Hutus, were killed by Hutus in 100 days in the spring of 1994.
Gen. Dallaire has described dealing with Col. Bagosora in those bloody days as having to "shake hands with the devil," the title he gave his best-selling book about Rwanda, published late last year.
Testifying for a full day, the first in what is expected to be at least a week on the stand, Gen. Dallaire said that, as the killing began in the early days of April, 1994, he met with Col. Bagosora and discussed what was taking place around Kigali. The colonel, he said, was implacably calm in a tense situation, which suggested to Gen. Dallaire that he was either mad - or watching events unfold as planned. "What I found incredible to witness was I had never found someone so calm and so at ease with what was going on," he said. "At no other time did I see anybody other than Bagosora as the leading body. ..... They were implementing a plan we had heard from so many sources."
Col. Bagosora and his colleagues have been indicted for conspiracy, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The colonel, and Brigadier-General Gratien Kabiligi, Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva and Major Aloys Ntabakuze, have all pleaded not guilty. This may prove to be the most important of the trials held in Arusha over the past nine years, if the prosecution can prove the killings were organized from the highest level of the Hutu power structure.
Testifying in the tidy blond-wood courtroom, Gen. Dallaire described a meeting on the night of April 6, after Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash, at which Col. Bagosora effectively seized control of the country. He said the colonel dismissed the authority of prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Tutsi.
Gen. Dallaire said he was surprised at Ms. Uwilingiyimana's absence from the crisis meeting and said the gathering was "something like planning a coup." The next day, Ms. Uwilingiyimana was raped and killed by troops commanded by Col. Bagosora. Her family, and 10 Belgian peacekeepers sent to protect them, also died on that first day of murders. As the weeks passed, Gen. Dallaire tried and failed to arrange for more UN troops or international intervention. The killings continued. Twice Col. Bagosora threatened to shoot Gen. Dallaire; in July when he spotted Gen. Dallaire at a hotel, he pushed into his face on a staircase. "I was threatened with a pistol and was told that next time he will kill me," the retired general testified yesterday.
Gen. Dallaire has declined to speak to reporters until he has concluded his testimony. Friends of his say this opportunity to testify is particularly important for him, because he badly wants to see Col. Bagosora held responsible for his role in the genocide. "This is the one he wants to see go down," a friend said in an interview. Although Gen. Dallaire suffered a crippling case of posttraumatic stress disorder in the wake of the genocide and then retired, friends said he was feeling strong and positive about attending the tribunal.
Tribunal spokesman Roland Amoussouga said in an interview last night that Gen. Dallaire, who testified in English and in civilian clothes, was "strong and articulate and in full command" on the stand.
Gen. Dallaire has testified at the tribunal once before, for a single day in February, 1998, in the trial of a mayor accused of ordering mass rapes and killings in his area. The mayor was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. In that testimony, when the defence questioned Gen. Dallaire about his inability to muster a force to stop the killing, he wept on the stand.
The Canadian military has taken special steps to ensure Gen. Dallaire's safety in Arusha, Mr. Amoussouga said. Gen. Dallaire's testimony has drawn an unprecedented number of international reporters and observers to the tribunal, he said, and this trial is also of huge interest in Rwanda, where recordings of the proceedings in Arusha are publicly broadcast each day. "Dallaire is a special calibre of witness, given the role that he played during the time in question," Mr. Amoussouga said.