View Video | Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal

Dennis Byron
speaks on ...

the enormous investigative challenges

Transcript

0:00

In terms of the overall is-, the, the, the issue of the length of trials has been an issue which has bothered me. I consider that, the, initially, the, it was inevitable that things would take time because the, there was no prototype really to follow.

0:31

Robert Utter: Of course.

0:32

And so the persons who came here were creating something new. The investigation, I thought, must have been extremely difficult because the ICTR is not a state and the investigators don’t have, do not have police powers. So the, the, the process of getting information had to use techniques that, because it is voluntary on the part of the witnesses, could be compelled to testify.

1:10

And then you also were faced with the, with the reality that the persons to whom they wish to or from whom they wish to gain information were scattered around the world and many of them were in hiding for security and other reasons. So initially, the, the, the actual investigative challenges must have been quite enormous.