Cornell hosts lecture by Iowan prosecuting suspects in ’94 Rwanda genocide

MOUNT VERNON — Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Attorney in Iowa who has spent nearly five years finding and prosecuting suspects in the 1994 Rwanda genocide that left hundreds of thousands dead, will speak at Cornell College on Monday, April 10.

Rapp’s lecture, “Lessons From Rwanda,” is at 11 a.m. in Shaw Lounge in The Commons. Admission is free.

Rapp is chief of prosecutions for the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The Tanzania-based tribunal was set up to try chief suspects in the 1994 genocide, when members of Rwanda’s majority ethnic group, the Hutu, went on a rampage against the minority Tutsi. The attacks followed the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana in a plane crash. Habyarimana, a Hutu, had wanted to install a transitional government in Rwanda and include a Tutsi-dominated rebel group. Hutu extremists were incensed at this plan.

Over nearly 100 days, between 500,000 and 1 million people were slaughtered, many trapped in churches, slain with machetes, shot or burned alive. Millions fled the country.

Rapp prosecuted three media executives who helped incite the country’s extremist militia as well as broadcast the whereabouts of Tutsi sympathizers. The three-year “media trial” concluded in 2003 and set precedent for other cases going before the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Rapp, formerly of Cedar Falls, was U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa from 1993 to 2001. Prior to that he was an attorney in Waterloo, served as a Staff Director and Counsel at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and was a member of the Iowa Legislature.

Rapp’s Cornell visit is sponsored by the politics department and the Lecture, Artists, Cultural Events Consortium.