Jean Akayesu
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Jean-Paul Akayesu (born 1953) is a former teacher, school inspector, and Mouvement Démocratique Républicain politician from Rwanda. He served as mayor of Taba commune from April 1993 until June 1994.
As mayor, Akayesu was responsible for performing executive functions and maintaining order in Taba, meaning he had command of the communal police and any gendarmes assigned to the commune. He was subject only to the prefect. He was considered well-liked and intelligent.
During the Rwandan Genocide of mid-1994, over 2000 Tutsis were killed in Akayesu's commune, and many others were subject to violence and other forms of hatred. Akayesu not only refrained from stopping the killings, but personally supervised the murder of various Tutsis.[citation needed] He also gave a death list to other Hutus, and ordered house-to-house searches to locate Tutsis.[citation needed]
[edit] Trial
He stood trial for 15 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the Geneva Convention. Pierre-Richard Prosper was the lead prosecutor. Akayesu's defence team argued that Akayesu had no part in the killings, and that he had been powerless to stop them. In short, the defence argued, Akayesu was being made a scapegoat for the crimes of the people of Taba.
Despite this defence, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found him guilty of 9 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity. This was notable in that it was the first time that the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was enforced. On October 2, 1998, Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He was represented by Montreal lawyer John Philpot, brother of Parti Québécois politician and author Robin Philpot; this connection later surfaced in the 2007 Quebec general election after statements from Robin Philpot's book Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard appearing to deny the extent of the genocide were widely publicized. [1]
