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Security Council extends appointment of Rwanda war crimes tribunal judge

Security Council extends appointment of Rwanda war crimes tribunal judge

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The Security Council today unanimously voted to extend the appointment of a Ugandan judge serving on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) so that the case she is currently presiding over may proceed without interruption.

In 2003 the General Assembly elected Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa to serve as part of a pool of temporary, or ad litem, judges created to help expedite the court’s work. Although Judge Bossa’s term is for four years, the Tribunal’s statute only allows her to serve in Trial Chambers for three years.

Today’s Council resolution authorizes her to continuing serving as a judge in the Butare case until its completion. That case, which centres on the massacre of Tutsis in the southern Rwandan province of Butare, is expected to continue into next year.

Some 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days during the 1994 genocide when the Hutu Government then in power, members of the army and the Interahamwe Hutu militia led the massacre of hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis, as well as Hutu political moderates.