Less than a week after United Nations prisoners staged a hunger strike protesting the denial of
their choice of defence, a detainee charged with genocide refused to
plead at his initial appearance before the court on the grounds that
he has not been given the lawyer that he wants.
Emmanuel Bagambiki, a former Rwandan government official, refused to plead guilty or not guilty to charges that he helped massacre ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
"I wish to indicate immediately that I do not have the lawyer of my choice", Bagambiki told judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). "I do not dare plead in the absence of my counsel."
The United Nations court told Bagambiki in September that the court would not appoint his chosen lawyer, Guy Poupart, to the case because Poupart is a Canadian.
Bagambiki was one of twenty-five prisoners accused of genocide who staged a three-day hunger strike last week protesting the court's recent ban on the new assignment of French and Canadian lawyers to the accused.
Court spokesman Kingsely Moghalu said the ban was temporary, and was a policy meant to ensure the "wide representation of all nationalities" at the court.
Offial say that the preference of the French-speaking Rwandans for French or bilingual Canadian lawyers is not reason enough to pack the U.N. court with one nationality.
Court press releases say that nine out of thirty-eight defence lawyers are Canadian.
The twenty-five detainees stage their hunger strike in solidarity with Jean Paul Akayesu, a Rwandan convicted of genocide, who refused to eat for nine days after being told that the lawyer of his choice, the Canadian John Philpot, could not be appointed because of the lawyer's nationality.
Bagambiki had refused the counsel that the court appointed to defend him against six counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Conventions.
"I wrote to the registry that I do not have trust in him...therefore he is not my counsel" Bagambiki said.
He stands accused jointly with military commander Samuel Imanishimwe and another unnamed accused for murdering Tutsis and Hutu opposition leaders in Cyangugu district in Rwanda.
Judges adjourned the trial until the court administrators resolve the dispute over who will defend him.