Our Kind of Immigrant

I have had occasion before to mention Charles Munyaneza and Célestin Ugirashebuja, both former mayors of Rwandan towns and both accused by the Rwandan prosecutor general of taking shares in the 1994 holocaust. Munyazena, who is a non-failed asylum seeker, is accused by more than forty witnesses of organising massacres in his province, Gikongoro, and is fifty-fourth on the Rwandan prosecutor general's wanted list. Ugirashebuja, who is ninety-third on the same list, is accused of similar activities in his own province of Kigome. The Rwandan prosecutor general has issued international arrest warrants for both men; naturally, the British government has spared all efforts to co-operate, to the extent that the secretary general of Amnesty International has written to the Vicar of Downing Street's adviser on earthly law, Peter Goldsmith, expressing "grave concern". A spokesbeing for Goldsmith's office said it was aware of the letter. The attorney general is not, after all, the Home Office, which dismissed the Rwandan government's warrant on the grounds that "the UK does not have an extradition treaty with Rwanda and police were under no obligation to visit the suspects". The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, having been instructed to finish its business by 2008, is now asking governments to prosecute genocide suspects in their own countries. The British government did manage to prosecute an Afghan warlord last year for hostage-taking, mugging and shooting civilians prior to the advent of the Great Liberation; however, war crimes investigations are the province of the anti-terrorist branch, which has its hands full at the moment protecting us from the likes of Jean Charles de Menezes, Mohammed Abdul Kahar and anyone who looks demonstratorial near the Vicarage without asking permission first.