In a dingy room on a quiet Brussels side street, Gasana Ndobe sifts through documents and tapes, interviews traumatized witnesses and tries to unmask Rwanda's mass murderers.
Slowly, painstakingly, Ndobe gather evidence he hopes will one day be used in court against Hutu extremists responsible for the genocide of the minority Tutsis in his homeland.He has heard witnesses name a factory owner whose trucks carried death squads from massacre to massacre. Caught on tape is a radio broadcaster instructing the killers "not to forget the children." The writer of a pamphlet brands as traitors Hutu men who marry Tutsi women.
"Without justice, Rwanda will not be able to rebuild," Ndobe said during an interview in an office on loan from Belgium's Christian Peace Movement. "There will always be revenge and reprisals."
Ndobe and other human rights workers fear that, with the passage of time, Rwanda's crimes will be forgotten and the killers will get away scot-free.
"There will always be another disaster to grab the (world's) attention," said Lotte Leicht, Brussels director of the international monitoring agency Human Rights Watch. "But Rwanda was different . . . Genocide is not just another crime. It's the worst crime of all."
The U.N. Security Council voted Tuesday to set up a court to prosecute the organizers of the massacres of more than 500,000 Rwandans earlier this year.
But rights workers are frustrated by the sluggishness of international efforts to bring those responsible to book. They want national authorities to take the lead and apply the so-called Nuremberg Laws on genocide.
Named for the German city where Nazi criminals were tried after World War II, the Nuremberg Laws allow nations to judge people suspected of "crimes against humanity," no matter where the crimes took place.
Run out of Rwanda by the Tutsi-led rebels who now control the country, some of the Hutu killers are in neighboring Zaire plotting a return. Others are hiding in Europe, living on money plundered from the devastated nation they left behind.
Ndobe's Committee for the Respect of Human Rights and Democracy in Rwanda, which was founded in 1990, is passing information to Belgian authorities in the hope that they will prosecute genocide suspects in Belgium.
"These people are . . . living here without any worries," said Marie-Anne Swartenbroekx, a Belgian lawyer who is among the 20 or so volunteers working with Ndobe's group in their spare time.
"Several suspects are believed to have taken advantage of longstanding links between Belgium and its former African colony, said Ndobe, who fled Rwanda with his parents during a wave of persecution during the early 1960s.
Investigations have begun into some Rwandans living here, according to Justice Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Rafkin. But Swartenbroekx complained the investigators have not been given sufficient resources.
Ndobe said that those hiding in Belgium include a local leader of the Hutu extremist party he says organized massacres in the southern Rwandan city of Butare, where Ndobe's own brother was killed.
Others reported in Belgium include a lyricist whose songe vilified Hutus "not ready to kill Tutsis," and an army colonel called out of retirement to help coordinate the killings.
Even in Europe there is evidence the Hutu extremists have not abandoned their murderous ways. Swartenbroekx said Belgian-based Tutsis have recently received death threats.