All language subtitles for The.Uncondemned.2015.WEBRip.x264-ION10_2_English

[Thierry Cruvellier]
What was absolutely striking
was the silence.

There was nobody.

It was an empty country.

I haven't thought
about that for a while.

You know.

It's... Yeah.

I think I have put this
in a very dark place

that I haven't opened
for a while, so...

[Gilles Peress]
I keep hearing rumors
of weapons movements.

I keep hearing rumors
of something going down.

[Philip Gourevitch] People
said after the Holocaust,

"Without all that technology,
those Germans couldn't have
killed all those Jews."

That it was a sort of
freak of modern science.

[Chuck Roberts] It's being
called the most efficient
genocide in history.

[Gourevitch]
It was announced
on the radio

that we must not
let them get away.

We must exterminate them.

The idea
was total elimination.

[Roberts]
Up to one million people
killed in 100 days

in the small African nation
of Rwanda.

[Gourevitch] The Hutu majority
was to wipe out
the Tutsi minority.

Extremist Hutus,
who feared the loss
of majority power.

[Tom Squitieri] The way
people grabbed power

to try to keep it was to seek
to divide and conquer

by showing how they
are different than us.

[Peress] It's not like, poof!

Out of the blue,
mad genocidaires take over

and improvise a genocide.

No, no, no. Everybody knew.

The church knew.
French intelligence
for sure knew.

The Americans knew.
Everybody knew what
was coming.

[Squitieri] If people
chose not to act,

if world governments
chose not to act,

that was on them.

It wasn't going to be
because they didn't
know about it.

Because we told
them about it.

Well, I'm watching the news,
but the news

was all about OJ
in Los Angeles.

[Gourevitch] General Dallaire
was a Canadian general

in charge
of the UN Peacekeeping force.

The fax that Dallaire
sent to the UN
in January of 1994

gave a speed of killing.

[Peress] Dallaire
had a conscience

of what was
the right thing to do.

He had a conscience

of what the international
community should do.

And he couldn't manage it.

I really felt for this guy.

[Gourevitch] April
to July of 1994,

the Hutu Power mobilizers
realized, if they could swing
the arms

that were swinging
the machetes,

that they didn't have
to worry about having
low-tech.

Civilians against
their fellow civilians.

Neighbor to neighbor,

with the ordinary,
hand-held implements
of Rwandan peasant life.

[Peress] It's like a tsunami
that you're following,

and you're seeing what's left.

[Gourevitch] The scale,
the enormity, the scope.

It's happening in every town,
in every village,
on every hill.

[Peress] You breathe them.
You breathe them.

You breathe them in.
They're inside you.

[Squitieri] Bosnia, you had
to sneak across the borders,

survive Sniper's Alley
in Sarajevo.

But the menacing feeling
was worse in Rwanda.

[Peress] Having
gone through the Balkans,

I could accept the notion that
maybe there was a 50-50

between good and evil
in human nature.

But when I come out
of Rwanda,

evil is at 80%,
and goodness of man
is at 20%.

[Patricia Sabga] Chuck,
if you take a look
at what's happening

in Bosnia right now,
and then you take
a look at Rwanda,

you have to wonder when
and what the international
community

is going to do about it.

Horrible, heinous things
have happened.

The international community
has turned away.

And so there's no reason
not to do it again.

[Peress] Of course they
thought they had impunity

because they acted,
and the world did nothing
to stop them.

[Roberts] The United Nations
announced the creation

of the first international
criminal tribunal

since World War II
and Nuremberg.

A tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia

and a tribunal for Rwanda

will prosecute
the individuals responsible

for planning and carrying out
crimes against humanity.

[Patricia Sellers] Unlike
national criminal codes,

most of the international
crimes were not broken down
into elements.

And rape was no different.

Every single conflict,

sexual violence
is used as a tool.

Why? Because
it's extremely effective.

[Lindsey Hilsum]
It's what the victors do

to prove themselves
to be victorious.

[Sam Kiley]
That is what war is.

It is the total and utter
moral and civic collapse
of mankind.

[Hilsum] It is a crime.
It's an international crime.

And yet we don't seem
to be able to stop it.

[Sabga] The Soviets
and the Japanese

used rape as a tool
of war in World War II.

We saw it used again
by the Pakistanis
in Bangladesh in 1971.

But, Chuck, it has never been
prosecuted as a crime of war.

[Roberts] Never prosecuted?

[Sabga] Never prosecuted.

[Peress] Um, how can
there be hope?

You know, I've come
to look at those 20%,

the people who do good,
as real heroes.

And heroes are more
than just heroes
in themselves.

But heroes that have,
uh, redemption

for the rest of us.

It was something
that just kind of

kept ticking, ticking like,
"Man, how does this
happen?"

I saw this international
tribunal was being set up.

I was just absolutely
thrilled and said to myself,

"There's got to be a way
I can partake in this.

I'm going to be able
to practice
criminal law again."

[Sara Darehshori]
And I remember
when I was in fourth grade,

giving a talk
to a first grade
class about Lincoln.

Then I really wanted
to be a lawyer.

Do good things
with it. [laughs]

I saw the list of judges.

I cold-called.
You know, I'm really
not a cold-call person.

Richard Goldstone asked me

to become the legal advisor
for gender for both tribunals.

[Pierre Prosper]
My title going in
was Assistant Trial Attorney.

[Darehshori]
So I was hired
as an investigator.

These investigations would go
towards criminal prosecutions.

[Binaifer Nowrojee]
I went to law school

because I was interested
in justice,

and I found that law school
has nothing to do
with justice.

It's all about the law.

And that, actually, the law
has nothing really to do
with justice many times.

I had a very keen sense
of injustice

in terms of wanting to do
something about it.

I was working
for Human Rights Watch
as an investigator,

looking specifically
at human rights violations
against women.

But I was, what, 31?

I was 33.

I was 27.

Mmm-hmm.

[Cruvellier] I was young, too.

I had no experience
in covering trials,

let alone genocide cases.

This idea that, um,

we were reviving the dream
that Nuremberg represented,

that crimes against humanity

was a concern
to the whole humanity
by definition.

It took me a while
before I understood
that it's not that simple.

[Prosper] So Sara
arrived to Rwanda.

My first words in Rwanda
were, "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

I arrived at night.
There was nobody
at the airport.

I was expecting that
someone from the tribunal
would be there.

And I had no address.

A car from
Medecins Sans Frontieres

happened to drive by
the airport.

And it was so dark

because the streetlights
had been shot out.

We got to a hotel.
My door didn't close.

I was trying to use
a wire hanger

to get the door
to at least shut.

And there was a bloody
hand-print on the wall,

which was a pretty stark
reminder of what I was there
to do.

We were in an office that
used to be UNICEF's office.

Oh, my God,
the office supplies situation
was really, really bleak.

There hadn't been
tribunals like this.

We thought, "Well,
let's just go in the field

and see whether people
are willing to speak with us."

We went out to Kibuye,

which was a place
where a lot of killings
had occurred.

And we found people
who had been killed
escaping, running to the lake.

And it was pouring rain,
with the bones
and out the mud...

It felt like
a horror movie.

We were so focused
on establishing that
a genocide had occurred.

The idea was to get some
of the basics covered

to establish the main
elements of crimes

that we would have to show
for every case.

All kinds of genocide crimes
were being documented.

Historically,
sexual violence, rape,

these have been seen
as something lesser.

Not serious war crimes.

Sad, unfortunate, but never
given the same kind of, uh,

attention as crimes
of murder and other crimes.

We kept saying, you know,
"Well, what happened
to the women?

Where are the women
in this?"

[guide speaking]

[Sellers] You know,
there had been reports
of rape in Yugoslavia.

In Rwanda, why did people
not report what they saw
right before their eyes?

1919, after World War I,

a commission got together

and gave a list
of 33 war crimes.

And number five
on the list is rape.

Rape was a war crime
since 1919.

I'm not saying
they were enforced.

I'm just saying
the law was on the book.

[Darehshori] We got
a phone call in our office.

It was someone
from the Zambian government

informing us
of the very good news

that they had in custody

seven people
from our "Most Wanted List."

This was, obviously,
very confusing to us

because we did not yet
have a "Most Wanted List."
[laughs]

We all thought that,
of course, it had to start

with the big, big guys,
with Bagosora.

But it never works like this

because it depends
on when you can arrest.

And Akayesu was unlucky
to be caught very early.

He's a mayor of a small town,
Taba, not far from Kigali.

I've never questioned
a suspect before,

so this is my first
suspect interview.

Akayesu was brought in.

He was tall.
He was very polite
and well-spoken.

[Cruvellier]
During the beginning
of the massacres,

Akayesu resists
the famous Interahamwe,

the militia,
which is remarkable.

And then, after two weeks,
he changes.

[Darehshori] Akayesu goes
to this big political meeting.

Then he came back
from that meeting,

and, immediately,
the killings began in Taba.

Prior to the meeting,
Akayesu had prevented
killings in his town,

but now, he wasn't.

So my assumption
was that he would say,

"I was forced to do this.

At that meeting, I was told
that I would be killed
if I did not."

But he didn't say that.

He said that he didn't
see what happened,

that he was hiding
in his house

and not
at the Bureau Communal.

It wasn't at all
what I expected.

[Nowrojee]
It was the first time
I had been to Rwanda.

I remember it being
just beautifully green.

The flowers, the birds,

and just this
stunningly beautiful
hilly landscape.

And then just right under
that surface of beauty,

the ugliness, the tears,
the hatred, the trauma,

all of it, just one layer
underneath that beauty.

It was just so broken.

The women's rights groups
in Kigali basically said

that women have many other
important things
to worry about.

They are having trouble
putting food on the table.

They can't pay their
children's school fees.

They have medical issues.

They've lost everything.

That international justice
was low on that list.

[Darehshori] Akayesu had
to be released in 90 days.

There was definitely
a sense of time pressure.

We had to start
from the beginning

since we hadn't been
investigating him.

It resulted in a very quick
investigation in Taba.

[Rosette Morrison] I went
to find witnesses every day.

We moved house to house.

And if we found someone
who was a potential witness,

we would go back,
take a witness statement.

Go back, read
the statement to them.

Go back and confirm it.

[Darehshori] We didn't know
how secure any of our
information was.

I was really afraid that
if I wrote down people's names

that it would create
a security risk.

So, instead, I just put in
letters for their pseudonym.

If I had put more
thought into it I wouldn't
have done letters

because we quickly
ran out of letters.

This is the first indictment
for genocide ever.

[Nowrojee] I went
to Taba three times

because there were
so many rape victims.

You can't just approach
people directly

and say, "Tell me about
your sexual violence
experience."

You need to be brought
by an interlocutor
who women trust.

I got bounced around
until I met Godelieve.

Godelieve had started
her own group called SEVOTA,

and she had gotten
the women in Taba together
every Saturday

and started to begin
to break the silence.

More and more women came,

and more and more
women started

to speak about
what had happened.

I think it was just
one of those things.
We clicked, right?

But why?
Who knows? Something...

She didn't know me.
I didn't know her, so...

She took a leap
of faith to trust me.

I've interviewed, in my time,
hundreds of rape victims.

The Rwandan testimonies
were really some
of the most brutal.

A young woman
had been gang-raped,

and then somebody
took a pair of scissors

and cut out the outer area
of her vagina.

And then they
put it on a stick

and displayed it.

Some of these women
were raped repeatedly.

They'd flee from one place,
be raped.

They'd continue to flee.
They'd be found
and raped again.

Some of them were held,
individually,
as sexual slaves,

but some were held
in groups,

naked, moved
from place to place.

I remember feeling exhausted,

just physically drained,
from just hearing
these stories.

I remember my ears ringing.

I actually remember, like,
hearing a ringing sound
in my ears.

They would tell you,
and again and again,

they would say,
"We begged to be killed
after the rapes.

We'd say,
'Please kill us. Kill us.'

And a lot of the Interahamwe,
the Hutu militias would say,

'No we're going to leave you
alive, so that you will die
of sadness.'"

And that's
what these women said,

that "we are dying
of sadness now."

You know you are holding
in your hand the possibility
to do something.

I left Rwanda
with these testimonies,

completely driven
to do something about it.

At that point,
I was really worried.

I would have these
moments of thinking,

"Oh, my God,
this is so important,"

and, "Shouldn't there
be some other people?"

"Boyz in the Hood
were always hard."

In closing argument,
I've been known
to drop

a few lines in there,

just to see if anyone's
paying attention.

When I was in hardcore gangs,

I was carrying about
22 murder cases at a time.

Before hardcore gangs,
it was murder, assault
and battery,

kidnapping, rape, burglary,
whatever it would be.

There were
some unusual cases.

I convicted...
Well, I'll tell you anyway
because it's the truth.

I convicted a blind man
for burglary.

I remember speaking
to Pierre,

talking about his involvement
in trying gang cases
in Los Angeles.

And I thought,
"This is going to be good."

[Prosper] I get to Rwanda.

And I remember walking down
the hall and meeting Sara,

and it was just,
"Come into my office."

[Darehshori]
Having Pierre show up just
in time for trial preparation

was a huge relief.

We were looking
at indictments.

There were 15 people
in the room

from 11 different countries.

Francophone, Anglophone,
Chinese who were speaking
in French...

Eleven different jurisdictions.

It was just, "The crown
would do this."

So we would debate,
"This is how the cover page
should look."

I'm serious.

One time, we had
to have a meeting,
an emergency meeting,

because we had one packet

of paper, of copying paper
left, literally just one,

and the whole meeting
was about

how we're going
to use this paper.

Are we going to write
this letter?

Are we going to do
this indictment?

It felt as though
we were dropped on Mars,

and our job was to make
something happen.

We were young.
We were energetic.
We were ambitious.

We had me, Sara, Rosette.

[Morrison] We were also
living in the same apartment.

[Prosper] When we'd go out
to eat, we'd say,

"Do you want to go get
some racing chicken?"

We called it "racing chicken."

They were the toughest,
chewiest chickens.

It was kind of like
a thoroughbred, a horse.

It was just lean.
It was all muscle.

It was really
a struggle to get

the meat off the bones.

We had drinks
at this restaurant.

We came out,
and we had a flat tire.

I thought that
Pierre would roll up
his sleeves to...

I looked at him, and he said
"What? It's a silk sweater!"

I did not own a silk sweater.

We would go out,
have dinner,

come back and just worked
and worked.

My job
was to build Akayesu.

And I think just
about everyone felt

that Akayesu
was a loser case.

There was a period
where he actually
protected his population.

And then when he
began the violence,

people thought that
he was not involved,
or he was threatened.

There was nothing
that he could do.

Akayesu was the mayor.

Rwanda is a society,
where the people

show great deference
the mayor,

the"bourgmestre,"
as it's known.

They go to thebourgmestre
for everything.

For advice, family advice,

to resolve neighborly disputes,

to help with education,
medicine, you name it.

April 18, the new
interim prime minister

comes down near Taba,
to give a speech.

It was significant that,

A, an interim prime minister
travels down to the South,

B, that the interim
prime minister is trying
to quell differences

among themselves,

C, that the interim
prime minister

is of the same party
as Akayesu,

and, D,
it was the tipping point

because, after that meeting,
the genocide started in Taba.

The whole issue
then boiled down to,

"Well, why did it happen?"

What shot down the theory
that he was being threatened

is that he had plenty
of opportunities to run away.

He didn't have someone
with a gun at his head.

He could have fled.
And Akayesu didn't flee.

He could have continued
to save people,

and he did not.

People do things
for political motivation.
Like Milosevic.

You may have people
at lower levels

that are pure butchers.
It's all ethnic hate.

But, usually, the person
at the top,

there's a political drive
behind it.

He was an opportunist.

He thought the wind
was blowing
in that direction

and made
a calculated decision.

[Nowrojee] I got back
to Human Rights Watch

and did my report.

"Shattered Lives"
is the first comprehensive
documentation

of sexual violence
testimonies

during the genocide.

There was shock
at just the brutality
of the violations.

There was a huge amount
of publicity

and sudden awareness
around this issue

that I think had not been
present before.

You always think
when you're writing these
human rights reports,

like "Nobody will read these.
Who reads these except us?"

[Sellers] I remember reading
the document, and I said,

"Well, the facts are there."

What Binaifer did
was to wake up
the rest of the world

and put it out in
a book that you can hold
in your hand like this.

The facts that Binaifer
has put down
are so compelling.

They're just so compelling
that, after you read that book,

you say, "Game over, okay,

why aren't we doing
something about this?"

The tribunal needed to try
another approach.

[Lisa Pruitt] I was 32.

They gave me the title
of Gender Consultant.

I had worked
as a rape crisis counselor,

and I had just
finished writing

my dissertation
in feminist legal theory.

So I think I represented
the praxis candidate, right?

Wow! I was going off
to work for the United Nations!

I was very excited.

My brief was to focus
on the sexual assaults

in the Akayesu case.

Where do we have,
in all of our witness
statements,

that Akayesu saw acts
being committed,

and how could we
link that to him?

My concern was that
the investigators
were often too dismissive.

For example, the statement
of Victoire Mukambanda

was labeled by investigators
as "Not credible."

"Less than coherent."

Lost, quote,
"her train of thought."

What would you
expect someone

who is describing
the sort of trauma

that she's describing?

Might you not anticipate
that their story

would be a bit garbled

to the objective legal ear?

It seemed to me that
there were many women here

whose testimonies
were not taken seriously.

There was a real block
I was up against.

A presumption of,

"Well, everybody knows
that, in war, men rape."

Is this about sex,

or is this about power?

Many of
the investigators said,

"Well, we can't be
concerned about some
women who got raped.

We can't divert resources
to investigate those crimes.

We had a genocide down here."

"Hey, little lady, don't you
know what happened down here?"

It's easy to kill the message
by ridiculing the messenger.

"I've got 80,000 bodies here.

You want me to talk
to a couple women
who've been raped?"

Or "Those couple
of women aren't going
to talk to me,

so we can't get
the evidence,"

or, "Look, it wasn't
systematic. You know?

I would do it,
but it's not systematic,"
or, or, or.

I submitted this report.

I thought we had
a good case.

First-hand witnesses
and enough evidence

that the tribunal,
the Office of the Prosecutor,

should try to amend
the indictment

and that they should
go back out to find
these women.

I remember having
a conversation
with Patricia

when I was still in Kigali.

She said, um,
"I'm really pleased

with how your consultancy
is going."

So I started a little memo,

"Tips for How to Conduct
an Interview."

Make them comfortable.
Ask them where they'd
like to sit.

Would they like
a glass of water?

I knew I was going
out on a limb.

They weren't likely
to be moved

by my touchy-feely
recommendations.

I guess it got around
the building pretty fast.
[laughs]

My friend,

who drove me
to the airport
that day, said,

"You know, Lisa,
you've just become

the laughing-stock
of the building."

And I think
I already knew that,

but it was...
It was irrefutable, I guess,

once he said it.

And he turned
to me and said,

"You were raped.
Weren't you?"

And I said, "Yes."

And he said,

"I knew that
the day you arrived."

So maybe he knew
that because...

Or he deduced that
from the passion

and the commitment
that I felt

and exhibited
around the issue.

I remember the flight
from Kigali to Nairobi,

crying the whole way.

I wound up back
in The Hague

before the Office
of the Prosecutor.

They said this work
that I had done

was not going to be used,

that the case was going
to go forward

under the existing indictment,
which did not include

sexual assaults.

I could deal
with the humiliation

of being the laughing-stock
on the ground in Rwanda,

but it was even worse

to be confronted

with what appeared
to be the reality

that sending me
to Rwanda, to do this work,

had really been a ruse.

I remember
being in the meeting.

Her disappointment...
I remember walking out
of that office,

and certainly didn't want
to show her my disappointment

because I'm thinking
about, "Okay, now,

how do we go about it?
Now what do we do tactically?"

I really just
tried to put it
out of my mind.

I could only assume
that my document
was going nowhere.

[Cruvellier] So, in late '96,

when Louise Arbour
is taking over
as Chief Prosecutor,

it's a mess.

The Office of the Prosecutor
has no strategy,

has no sense of,
how do we handle this?

The decisions that Arbour
are going to take

are crucial before they say,
"Forget it. Close down."

Judge Arbour asks me
point-blank, she says,

"Pierre, we have problems here.

I have one question for you.

If I put you in charge,
can you do this?"

I was in London
for Christmas,

and I saw the news.

I immediately
flew back to Kigali.

It was very obvious

that it was because
this person intended

to go and testify that
he had been attacked.

Pierre Prosper,
with ten years' experience,

cannot possibly
be in charge of the case.

You could only be
very experienced

to handle

the most complicated crime
one could imagine.

So, obviously,
the one in charge

would have to get
more than 20 years'
criminal experience.

That's what I think
everybody had in mind.

[James Stewart]
I've been a prosecutor

for over 30 years in Canada.

I started out
dealing with shoplifting
and minor assaults

and thefts
and things like that

before I was allowed
anywhere near
a more serious case.

And I was thinking,
"Here we are starting

with genocide,
crimes against humanity,
and war crimes."

They created a single team
under my leadership

to handle three cases,
including Akayesu.

Pierre and Sara Darehshori,

they were the ones
who carried the ball.

The trial is set to start
on Thursday.

So it's now Monday.
I have no witnesses.

[Morrison]
People were scared.
Do you blame them?

I would be scared.
They killed this witness.

It was not just
a bit of intimidation.

And we came down
here on, uh...

I think it was probably
a Tuesday.

We were in the bush.

We were trying to get
the witnesses to come
forward.

Rosette and I had to say,
"Hey, look, we really
need you."

The people agreed
to come out and testify.

[siren blaring]

[journalist] Please, sir...

[indistinct chatter]

[journalist]
This is not the guy.

[camera shutters clicking]

[journalist]
No, that's not the guy, either.
He's here.

Laity Kama
was the presiding judge.

Senegalese,
an extraordinary character

with an incredible face,

a lot of charisma,
deep voice,
a natural authority.

Then you had this
Swedish judge, Aspergren.

He was an intelligent man,
could speak excellent French
and English.

And then there was Pillay,
the South African judge

who came
with a huge reputation

because of her fight
against Apartheid.

[Prosper] Akayesu walks
into the courtroom.

He's in a suit.

He's tall, good-looking man.

And I remember
sitting back and saying,

"I didn't necessarily have
a vision in my mind

of what a war criminal
looked like,

but he doesn't look
like a war criminal."

[speaking French]

You feel like... I know
this is historic
and important,

but there was nothing
that indicated that
that was the case,

apart from the robes.

There was no
air conditioning.

It was extremely hot
and muggy.

That courtroom was so hot!

No one cared about us.

The occasional backpacker

or the tribunal staffer
that had nothing to do.

The court assistant,
he would come in

and then almost
immediately fall asleep

throughout the entire day
and then wake up in time
to leave,

which always seemed
like not a good omen.

[Prosper] I'm sure Akayesu
looked over at us,

thinking, "This will
be a cakewalk."

[Morrison] The first witness.

She was 68 years old,

and she couldn't
see very clearly.

And so when they asked her

if she saw Akayesu
in the courtroom,

she said she didn't know.

And then the judge,

graciously, asked her
to go closer

and see if she
could identify.

She started from the side
of the prosecutor,

and she would go
to every individual,

kind of lift their faces
and look them in the eyes.

She looked
at the judges as well!

Mmm-mmm.

Then she eventually made it
to where Akayesu was,

and when she saw him,

she just screamed,
like... [imitates screaming]

"It's him! This is him!
This is him!"

And Akayesu kind of smiled.

I'm coming
from a common law system.

The judges are coming
from a civil law system.

At the start of the trial,

we put on a witness.

The defense attorney gets up

and really begins
to badger my witness.

I stand up, and I say,
"Excuse me, Your Honors,
objection.

He's badgering my witness."

And I look at Judge Kama.

This man is about
literally seven feet tall.

Fingers were about
this long.

And he leans back
to Judge Aspergren,
and he says,

"Objection? What is this?
Do you have this
in your system?"

And Aspergren is like,
"No, no, no."

And then he leans
to Judge Pillay.

He says, "Do you have
this in your system?"

And she
shakes her head, "No."

And then he just says,

finger to his mouth,
and goes,

"Mr. Prosecutor,
there will be none
of that. Sit down."

So I sit down.
The defense attorney
gets up and continues.

And of course, I was prosecutor
in LA, in Compton.
I get up again. I say,

"Your Honors, this is just
not right. Objection."

And the judge said,
"Sit down."

The defense attorney
continues again.

I get up, and all he did
is wave his long finger,
and he would just...

He would just flick at me.
"Sit down. Sit down."

Make sure it plays.

[man speaking French]

Where's the microphone?

Your Honors, if you recall,
this is the prosecution
exhibit number 6.

As little experience as we had,

nobody else had prosecuted
a genocide case

in an international court
before.

With the first trial
establishing the elements
of the genocide,

we needed to do it
in such a way

that it could be used
by future trials.

[Stewart] We had
to prove as a fact

that genocide had occurred.

We worried that
everybody in the world

would know that there
had been a genocide
in Rwanda in 1994,

except our trial chamber.

There were all these
indictments against Akayesu,

but not a single one of them
contained sexual violence.

I was outraged
when I saw that.

The prosecutor's team
and all the lawyers there

were working to try
and get things
off the ground.

The last thing they wanted

was some pesky activists
coming to tell them
to amend their case.

Now, I remember
meeting Binaifer.

I remember her making
the case to me about
the sexual violence.

And I remember this
very clearly,

Pierre Prosper telling me,

"We're very committed
to prosecuting rape,

but you've got
the wrong guy.

You're barking up
the wrong tree.

We'll get rape prosecutions.
Don't worry.

But this is not
the right case."

There wasn't enough for me.

There wasn't enough to say,

"Women were raped in Taba.
Therefore, Akayesu should
be prosecuted."

It's not that simple.

We had to prove Akayesu knew,
allowed it to happen,

did it himself,
or whatever it may be,

and therefore should
be prosecuted.

When you're
a prosecuting lawyer,

what you do is you look
at the elements of the crime

that are contained in the law
that you're prosecuting,

and then you try
and match them

to what you have
from the testimony.

It's not rocket science.

I told them that
this is something that
we were going to pursue.

I told them that, if we
found the evidence,
that we would push it.

I saw myself as an ambassador
for the voices
of these Rwandan women,

and I was damned
if I was going to disappear.

[Prosper] Witness H,
that was one of our final
witnesses.

As part of the trial process,

Pierre and I would go
and spend time

with our witnesses
in preparation
for their testimony.

Go through their statement,

make sure
it remains accurate.

And then, just in the course
of questioning,

she said, "Then I saw
the women being dragged
to the back

of the Bureau Communal,
and I saw them being raped."

The Bureau Communal
is the mayor's office.

"Whoa, whoa! Hold on."

She talked about how
it seemed actually systematic,

that people would sign
women out to be raped

and then bring them back.

"You saw this?"

This moment of...

She said, "Yes,
I saw women being raped."

This was potentially,
a game changer.

We never heard about women
being at the Bureau Communal.

That was always
the missing link.

Rapes at the Bureau Communal
would've been

something that Akayesu
couldn't have missed.

I called Patricia Sellers
in The Hague.

Bingo.

We want to see
what is the judges'
reaction to it, okay?

I don't want
to get in trouble
for producing evidence

that had not been
previously disclosed.

There was a possibility
it could be stricken.

There are many reasons
when evidence

that is not part
of your original statement

comes in that you
want to see,

what is the reaction
from the bench?

[Judge Pillay speaking]

[court translator speaking]

[Judge Aspergren
speaking French]

[court translator speaking]

This is close to the end.

The prosecution
is winding up its case.

Witness H comes
onto the stand

and begins to talk about rape.

Rape happened in Taba.

It's coming
into the courtroom.

It's coming through the voice
of a woman witness

who's not there because
she's a rape victim,

but she's talking about it.

And yet no rape charges.

Pierre asked
for the adjournment.

You know that's
a very difficult position.

You don't want to have
a case that you're putting on,

and then you call
for a recess
in your own case.

[Judge Kama speaking French]

[gavel bangs]

[Sellers] Pierre and I
start talking tactically.

The evidence that we needed

was to show that Akayesu
had knowledge of it.

We had the inside document.

I can't remember
how it got on my desk.

We really paid attention
to Lisa Pruitt's analysis,

and then we used it
to find women

that were
at the Bureau Communal

during a specific
two-week period.

We sent another team out
to look further
into this issue.

[Prosper] But this time,
what I wanted to do

was come in with a sensitive
and subtle approach.

Sometimes,
things don't happen
on your time,

but it's good that
they were done.

I'm drafting the amendment
here in The Hague.

Patricia could focus
with a laser beam.

So I went back and studied
the preparatory works

on the genocide convention,
read all the Nuremberg laws,

read all
the subsequent trials.

"Genocide" is the intent
to destroy, in whole or part.

Well, do you
have to kill them?

What if you just cause
serious bodily, mental harm,
and they don't die?

Is that still a genocide?

The assault goes beyond

the physicality
of the assault.

It's as if someone has
reached inside of you,

and some of them talk about
just pulling out their soul.

"Genocide"
envisions something

that falls short of death.
It's not just
mass extermination.

We're talking
about the power.

We're talking
about entitlement.

We're talking about
access and means,
humiliation.

[Prosper] We were ready.

We were going
to amend the charges

to include rape
as a crime of genocide

and a crime
against humanity.

When your trial has started,
and you're looking
for best evidence,

you're in trouble.

You should have
best evidence going in.

I remember, I met
with a group
of women activists.

And I said the Akayesu case
needed to really be salvaged,

and there was a discussion
about what we could do.

[Sellers] Binaifer called me
on the phone and said,

"Look, we're gonna
call an amicus."

We realized that you could
pioneer new jurisprudence.

The "friend
of the court" brief.

An amicus.

We could get the bench
to take judicial notice
of the fact

that rape had happened
and to push to prosecute it.

It was a catalyst
to do the right thing.

The Office of the Prosecutor
is discouraging us
from doing it.

We were really worried

that the amicus brief
was going to be grounds

for certainly reversal
on appeal

if not a mistrial altogether.

The amicus was filed.

And it was accepted
by the bench.

And the bench
urged the prosecution

to go back and look
at this issue again.

I had no reaction.
I was happy for them.

Well, I wasn't so upset
about the amicus.

If an amicus
comes in and says,

"They've got to amend
the indictment,"

and we're calling
for the amendment,

I would say that
that's a nice
parallel effort.

[Morrison]
I went back to Taba.
It was shocking.

I said, "Oh, so how are you?"

And she said,
"I've decided now,

I'm going to let it out.
I want to get if off my chest."

I didn't, you know,
"Why didn't you tell us
this in the beginning?"

No, that wasn't
what we wanted.

What we wanted was her
to come out and speak.

The amendment.
I was there, for sure.

[Judge Kama speaking French]

So Pierre explains
why the prosecution

has moved to amend
the indictment.

[Prosper speaking]

[Darehshori speaking]

[defense attorney
speaking French]

[Judge Kama speaking French]

[gavel bangs]

[women singing and clapping]

[Victoire Mukambanda
in native language]

[speaking native language]

[speaking native language]

[Godelieve Mukasarasi
speaking French]

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

[speaking French]

-[indistinct chatter]
-[car honking]

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

[Mukambanda speaking
native language]

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

[women singing
in native language]

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

[women continue singing]

[Cecile Mukarugwiza
speaking native language]

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

[Serafina Mukakinani
speaking native language]

[laughs]

[laughs]

[Mukambanda speaking
native language]

[laughs]

Pierre was there.
Sara was there.
You're trying

to do a little bit
of preparation,

but you're also just trying

to make sure that
there's a calm atmosphere.

[Darehshori] Patty had
a nice connection
with the women.

Well, yes,
and I have a gap.

That's the other thing
that helps me in Africa,
period.

Whenever I go to Africa,

there are so many people
with gaps in their teeth.

That's the first five
or ten minutes, okay?

You always have
an image in your head

when you read someone's
statement of what they
will look like, you know?

Everyone always looks
different than the picture,

and sometimes,
you're surprised
to see that,

"Oh, they're so tiny!"

"I didn't think that she
would be that young
or that old."

Witness JJ had
a very tiny baby,

a brand-new newborn.

What struck me about OO
was that she was young.

Witness NN
was Witness JJ's sister.

We had to use
very explicit terms

for "penis" and "vagina"
and "penetration"

to illustrate that
a rape had occurred.

And so Pierre explained
this to Witness JJ,

and she thought
that was hilarious.

Well, she said,
"we never use
the term "penis.'"

And then she just
cracked up.

JJ seemed to be a bit
of a leader of the group.

Apparently,
she only drank beer.

But the tribunal
had a policy not
to give beers to witnesses

because apparently they had
had some incident in the past,

which did not go over well
at all with Witness JJ.

I think they only agreed
to give her beer
after she had testified.

I brought her in,

and all the witnesses,

to the courtroom
before they testified.

"Okay, this is where
you'll sit.

This is where I will be.
I will be asking
you questions."

And I had Sara stand up
there, and I said,

"The judges will be here.

The defense attorney
will be over here.

The audience will be behind
you, but we have..."

We had a screen up
so people could not
see them.

It was a rather crude way
of protecting people.

There was a little curtain that
would sort of go around them

so people in the courtroom
could see them,

but not people
in the public gallery.

It was so much
to ask to come
to the tribunal

and to basically
have to relive, what,

the worst moments
of their lives.

It must have been terrifying.

And even, in fact,
Witness JJ was terrified.

I began to tell her
about what happened
in Bosnia,

in Japan, and elsewhere,

and how none of these cases

had been prosecuted,
and no one had ever
been prosecuted

for rape
in time of war, ever.

And I explained to her,
I was like,

"You have the opportunity
to speak for those women

who cannot speak today,

who've never had
this opportunity.

You have a chance
to make a difference."

We're in the safe house.
I remember that.

And then she said,
"Okay, I will do it."

The women decided
that they were going

to pray before the beginning
of the next day

they were going
to be testifying.

And they said a prayer,

and as soon
as it was beginning
to be translated to me,

I wrote it down.
They said, "We speak
only the truth,"

and to say what they saw
and not what they heard,

and that they want
justice, not revenge.

[siren blaring]

[Cruvellier] I don't know why
it felt so particularly heavy.

There was a much
heavier feeling

than at some other hearings
when it was about

massacres on the hills.

I went in the public gallery.

It was packed. It was full.

-Academics.
-Journalists.

-NGOs.
-There was this
tingle in the air.

I was just hushed.

I walked them

to the stand,
and I sat there,

sort of to say,
"Come on. Go for it."

[judge Kama speaking French]

[Mukambanda speaking
native language]

[Judge Kama speaking French]

She had this little,
tiny, timid voice

and was obviously
very nervous.

She had found her stride.

It was really remarkable.
Her voice was strong.

She began to sit up.

And she said...

And she said...

[court translator speaking]

After she came out,
she had tears.

And I hugged her, and I said,
"Why are you crying?"

And she said,
"They are tears of joy!

I'm so happy! I have
got this off my chest."

I think she also knew
that she had done
fabulously well.

Did we get her beer?

They were all holding hands
in this type of circle.

These were women
who survived a genocide

and had such heart,
you know?

Sometimes, when you're
in the face of such evil,

it's so much easier to just
become evil, too.

But they couldn't have.
It wasn't them.

By the time we got to OO,

you could actually
see the other side
becoming deflated.

Akayesu was really upset

by the rape testimony.

He seemed really
noticeably downcast

and had his head down.
And the women who
still had yet to testify said,

"Just wait till we get
on the stand."

One witness, um, who,
when the judges say,

"Do you want to say anything
at the end of testifying?"

She looks at Akayesu,
and she says,

"Well, can't you at least
say you're sorry?"

[laughs]

They expected, they hoped,

they trusted us
to bring justice.

And one of the biggest fears
that I had was,

"Well, what if we lost?"

[Judge Kama speaking French]

[repeats in French]

The accused
speaks, finally.

And that's his one chance
to make his case.

He was hungry.

The resistance of Akayesu

was pretty strong
on the most damning facts.

[Akayesu speaking French]

[Cruvellier] Akayesu
did a rather good job

putting his case forward
and saying,

"I was not in charge.
It wasn't me.

It was the head
of the militia."

For eight hours,
Akayesu, essentially,
had the floor,

and he was able to present
a masterful story

that he wove

that answered
all the allegations

that many of the witnesses
had made.

And I said,
"Wait till tomorrow."

I had something
he obviously
had forgotten about.

Pierre had the advantage
of statements

that Akayesu had given
to Sara Darehshori.

[Darehshori] At the time,
we didn't know for sure

that he would testify,
but if he did, having
this was gold.

[Prosper speaking]

[Akayesu speaking French]

This is something
that we would do
when I was a DA.

You make the witness
read their own testimony.
You say,

"This is a transcript
of your interview.

Please read this.
What you said."

And you force them to do it
in their words, and you say,

"Okay, fine.
Now, yesterday you said this."

[Darehshori]
Akayesu testified
the Interahamwe,

the militia, was in charge.

But in my interview,
he didn't say that.

He didn't even say
he was threatened.

And when he testified
that no one was raped

at the Bureau Communal,

he told me he wasn't even
at the Bureau Communal,

so how could he know?

[court translator speaking]

And then, suddenly,
something just breaks.

Akayesu loses control
of his version.

[court translator speaking]

[Prosper speaking]

[Akayesu speaking French]

And Pierre
cross examined him on,

I think, about ten points
of inconsistency.

Every word spoken
was... Poom!

Was sent in the air,
was floating over everybody

until it drops and makes
a sort of heavy sound.

[court translator speaking]

[Judge Pillay speaking]

[court translator speaking]

Sara got his story.
[laughs] Good for her.

[Prosper speaking]

And the case is closed
an hour later.

[Prosper] Your Honors,
on behalf of the Office
of the Prosecutor,

on behalf

of the people of Taba,

on behalf
of the international community,

I ask you to find
Jean-Paul Akayesu

guilty of genocide

and all counts
for which he is charged.

Thank you.

You have a sense that
you've got the truth.

You've got the truth
that you need.

[singing in native language]

They usually give you
a few days' notice.

Um, well, I mean,

it's sort of like

waiting for a jury
to come back.

[continues singing]

On the days leading
up to the judgment,

Pierre would call just
to give a nervous giggle,
and he would say,

"Judgment Day minus two,
minus one."

[continues singing]

[Sellers] I remember
Pierre telling me,

"I saw the law clerk,

and the body language let me
know I think we're okay."

I said, "Pierre, let's not
even think about that."

[Prosper] We alerted
all the witnesses

and the bourgmestre,
and everyone knew.

[continues singing]

Today will be the day.

-[man 1] All rise.
-[man 2] All rise.

Please be seated.

[speaking French]

I remember just, phew,
relaxing my shoulders.

All that stress
and frustration
at different times

when we weren't sure
what the outcome would be.

[Stewart] Pierre
and Sara made up

for a certain
lack of experience

by sheer hard work
and smarts.

Sara called me. She said,
"We did it! Mrs. Morrison,
we did it! We did it!"

What did James say?
They were popping
champagne? Yes.

[Nowrojee]
I was in the United States.

We were waiting
for the judgment.
This group

of women lawyers that had
worked on the amicus,

we were waiting
for the judgment.

And I remember
just being bowled over.

It was one of the days,
when, really,

there becomes a before
and an after.

Now, we were standing
on firmer,

factually recognized
grounds by the court,

legally recognized grounds
by the court.

And it's as if you had run
the first marathon.

You can train
for the next one,
but the first one,

you'd crossed the line.

You couldn't un-run it now.

The judgment
was there and it was real.

I was working in London

for the law firm I joined
after I left Rwanda.

I recall reading it
in the International
Herald Tribune.

And I recall my boss,

being on the phone
with my boss,
and having him say,

"Lisa, did you see
what happened
in Arusha yesterday?

Did you see what happened
in the Akayesu case?"

And I said, "I did! Yeah."

And it's amazing,

but I can't take
any credit for it.

I remember feeling that
this is a great moment
in history,

but I had been
under the impression,

in the intervening period,
that my memo had been
deep-sixed. [laughs]

Put in some file folder
somewhere, never to see
the light of day.

I mean, how would
I know? [laughs]

How would I know
that Pierre Prosper
or anyone read it

after that very
dismal meeting

with the Office
of the Prosecutor
in The Hague.

I wasn't aware
that the indictment
had been amended.

It was 17 years,

until last fall,
when you made
contact with me

and said,

"Are you the Lisa Pruitt
who worked in Rwanda
in 1996?

I have the Pruitt Memo!"

You called it
the "Pruitt Memo,"
so that's wonderful.

[Prosper] It was Witness H
who set off the chain
of events

that brought us
back to Lisa's memo.

It was a blueprint
to go after the rape charges.

I think a lot
of rape survivors,

for some reason, remember

the date
when they were raped.

And, for me,
it was March 5th.

[Prosper] And we spoke
with Witness H on March 5th...

1984.

[Prosper] ...1997.

Wow.

Wow!

Thirteen years.

[Prosper] I saw
the UN guard,
and I say,

"I want to go see Akayesu."

He's sitting down.
One arm is shackled
to the table,

and he's smoking a cigarette.

So I say to him, I go,
"Mr. Akayesu, goodbye."

We were like, "Do we
shake each other's hands?"

And, simultaneously,

at the same time,
we said, "No way."

You could see
I was just like...

That was his fate,

that a simple mayor
of a small town

would actually become
the judicial symbol

of the genocide in Rwanda.

That's the story of Akayesu,

which is always

a bit extraordinary

because it should
have never been.

Without Godelieve,
she was the person,

the bridge, between
the international justice
and the women.

[Mukasarasi speaking French]

You know, when you
read history books,

we're taught about heroes,

and who our heroes should be
and who they are,

but people like Godelieve
are my heroes.

When I think back
to Akayesu,

one of the things that
I always say is that,

you know, "What a word!"

I mean, it's almost
become like

an abstract word or painting.

If you went to someone
and said, "Akayesu,"

what does that mean?
What does that word mean?

It should be
as well-known asBrown
vs. Board of Education,

as well-known as the case

from the Inter-American court
on Gonzales.

Because of Akayesu,

genocide
is an international crime.

A person can be guilty
for genocide,

and it includes acts
of sexual violence.

The fact that you have
women from rural Rwanda,

where they had
no electricity,
no running water.

And they were able
to change the landscape

of not only
international criminal law

but of legal theory
and principles

so that, to this day,
when people study

rape and sexual violence
in time of war,

they study the story
of Witness JJ and the others.

[man speaking French]

[whispering]