Rwandan accused of war crimes wins delay in Canada

By Levon Sevunts Jan 13, 2012, 19:01 GMT

Montreal- A Rwandan war crimes suspect whom Canada wants to deport won another court stay against his departure this week, causing another delay in Canada's 15-year-long effort to deport the man.

Leon Mugesera is wanted in his native Rwanda on war crime charges that he helped incite the 1994 genocide.

Leon Mugesera's lawyers won the delay on Thursday just a day after Canada's Federal Court ordered him to leave the country. Quebec's Superior Court ordered a stay on his deportation order, to allow the legal evaluation of a prior request from the United Nations' committee against torture.

On Wednesday, just hours after the deportation order by the Federal Court, Mugesera was rushed to hospital in Quebec City, the capital of Canada's French-speaking province.

His family claims he's in a critical condition, suffering from a stress-related illness.

Mugesera, 59, arrived in Canada in 1993 with his wife and five children and was granted permanent residence status. They'd fled Rwanda in 1992 after an arrest warrant was issued for Mugesera, who had made a speech allegedly inciting the majority Hutus to kill the minority Tutsis.

In his speech, Mugesera called Rwandan Tutsis 'cockroaches' and 'scum,' and encouraged fellow Hutus to kill them.

That speech was later broadcast at the height of the 1994 genocide, which claimed the lives of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Mugesera was ordered deported in 1996, after it was discovered he had lied on his application form, which asked whether he'd been involved in the commission of a crime against humanity.

His deportation went through several appeals until 2005, when the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that Mugesera was not admissible to Canada because there were reasonable grounds to believe he committed a crime against humanity.

Another legal hurdle for Mugesera's deportation was cleared in 2007, when Rwanda dropped the death penalty for convicted war criminals. Canadian laws prohibit authorities from deporting suspects to countries where they face the death penalty.

But Mugesera's lawyer, Johanne Doyon, has argued her client will face torture and even death if he returns to Rwanda.

On Thursday morning Mugesera's family urged Ottawa to allow the United Nations to complete its investigation.

'We implore Canada to respect its international obligations as demanded by the (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights on Jan. 11, 2012,' the family said in the short statement.

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