Kayumba Nyamwasas refugee status attacked

mchambawima1 · 2015-09-14T19:24:05+00:00

Rwanda's former army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa (L) next to his son Mark, her daughter Phiola and his wife Rosette sits at court in Johannesburg on July 10, 2012. Ex-Rwandan army general is in court to testify in the trial of men charged with attempting to kill him outside his Johannesburg home in 2010. Nyamwasa told a South African court on June 21, 2012 that he was shot two years ago for defying President Paul Kagame, as he testified in the trial of six men. "The reasons why I would think anyone would want me dead is that I have over the years defied the leadership, in particular President Kagame, on things that needed change," Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa told a Johannesburg court. A High Court ruling that former Rwandan General Kayumba Nyamwasa was entitled to refugee status in South Africa sends out a message that the country has become a safe haven for suspected international criminals. This will be the argument presented by the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA) when it applies for leave to appeal in the High Court in Pretoria against the ruling on Tuesday. CoRMSA, assisted by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, in 2011 launched an application to review a 2010 decision by South African authorities to grant refugee status to Nyamasa, despite requests by Rwanda, France and Spain for his extradition to face criminal charges including war crimes. The case was argued in 2012 but Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi only delivered a 16-page judgment two years later in October 2014. She ruled that Nyamwasa was entitled to refugee status, that CoRMSA failed to establish that there was reason to believe he was involved in the alleged crimes and said the authorities must have taken the allegations against him into consideration. The Judge also ruled that the information disclosed in Nyamwasa's asylum application was confidential and there was no reason to justify its disclosure to either CoRMSA or the court itself. CoRMSA contends in court papers Nyamwasa was ineligible for refugee status because there was reason to believe he had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. Nyamwasa has been recuperating in South Africa after surviving a suspected assassination attempt on him in 2010, when he was shot in the stomach. CoRMSA maintains the issue before court was not if Nyamwasa should be returned to Rwanda, a country where he could be at risk of persecution, but whether the legal and procedural standards of the Refugees Act were properly applied. CoRMSA is of the view that South Africa is obliged either to prosecute Numwasa for the crimes or to extradite him to a state that will do so. The organisation contends the court's decision set a dangerous precedent that would effectively allow South Africa to use the confidentiality principle in refugee applications to shield the perpetrators of international crimes from accountability and its own controversial decisions from scrutiny. "It is sending a signal to war criminals the world over that they will find a safe haven in South Africa, a haven where they might be actively protected as refugees," it said. Source: citizen.co.za

Thread starter mchambawima1
Start date Sep 14, 2015

mchambawima1

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Kayumba Nyamwasas refugee status attacked

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Kayumba Nyamwasas refugee status attacked