Kiwi lawyer helps bring war criminal to justice

One of the world's most wanted war criminals, Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho twice eluded authorities hunting him as a leading perpetrator in the Rwandan genocide that saw 800,000 people murdered.

New Zealander Jonathan Moses helped to ensure Renzaho would not escape justice a third time.

The Auckland lawyer led the United Nations' prosecution of the former army leader at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). This week, Renzaho was sentenced to life in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Speaking to the Weekend Herald from Tanzania, where the UN tribunal is based in Arusha, Mr Moses said the case against the once-powerful leader was strong. "I'm pleased for his victims.

"Those people can feel there has been someone brought to account for the suffering they had to endure. And continue to endure."

The court found that 65-year-old Renzaho was instrumental in the 1994 genocide, using radio broadcasts to urge Hutu soldiers and civilians to set up roadblocks to kill fleeing Tutsi and moderate Hutu.

Governor of the Rwandan capital Kigali, Renzaho armed the militia, incited his followers to rape Tutsi women and organised mass murders at a refugee camp and a church. Both atrocities were committed within a few hundred metres of Hotel des Mille Collines, made famous by the film Hotel Rwanda, where 1000 people took refuge during the genocide.

More than 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days.

Mr Moses, one of the founding solicitors of the Mangere Community Law Centre with Andrew Becroft, now the Principal Youth Court Judge, has spent nearly eight years prosecuting Rwandan war crimes.

One case was against a priest, Father Seromba, who ordered his church to be bulldozed - with 2000 Tutsi refugees inside. He too was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Another trial involved more than 200,000 murdered Tutsi victims.

Mr Moses said the horror of such a death toll was unimaginable.

"There were amazing stories of survival and human courage. I'd hear these stories and wonder how these people could get up in the morning."

Mr Moses and wife Joanne, who worked as a volunteer doctor in a local hospital, and their three children have returned to live in Auckland, where Mr Moses plans to practise law again.

On the fall of the Rwandan interim Government in July 1994, after the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Tharcisse Renzaho fled into exile.

In 1997, he escaped a police trap. In December 2005, he gave the slip to an operation organised by the ICTR.

Renzaho was finally arrested on September 26, 2002, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Three days later, he was turned over to the ICTR.