Between 7 April and mid-July 1994 an estimated 937,000 Rwandans (according to a 2001 census the vast majority of whom were Tutsi), were murdered in massacres committed by militia, the gendarmerie and elements of the army, often with the participation of the local population (see Des Forges, 1999; Eltringham, 2004; IRIN, 2001). On 13 April 1994, Claude Dusaidi, the representative at the United Nations (UN) of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (the predominantly Tutsi rebel group that had entered into a power-sharing agreement with the government in August 1993), wrote to the President of the UN Security Council stating that a ‘crime of genocide’ had been committed against Rwandans in the presence of UN peacekeepers (UNAMIR1) and that the Security Council should establish a war crimes tribunal (Carlsson et al., 1999: 68).