Prologue: Survivors and Suspects

On the morning of Friday, June 7, 2002, security officers working for the United Nations war crimes tribunal in Rwanda gathered several survivors of the 1994 genocide and brought them quietly to the airport on the outskirts of the capital, Kigali. The group of survivors – mostly poor Tutsi peasants – was set to board a UN plane for the two-hour flight that crosses the vast expanse of Lake Victoria en route to the tribunal's courtrooms in Arusha, Tanzania. The survivors had been chosen to testify for the prosecution in two trials of Hutu genocide suspects at the international court.

Moving witnesses from the green hills of Rwanda to the windowless courtrooms in Arusha some 400 miles to the east had become routine in the six and a half years since trials first began at the UN war crimes tribunal. But as the events of that day and the next few months would illustrate, the tribunal's existence depended on carrying out the seldom-noticed task of taking witnesses out of the country and, most importantly, on the willingness of the Rwandan government to permit it to do so.

When the tribunal's security officers escorted the survivors to the airport, the officers were stunned to learn that the Tutsi-led Rwandan government had just instituted travel restrictions that blocked the Tutsi prosecution witnesses from traveling to Arusha to testify against Hutu suspects on trial for genocide.