ABSTRACT

Paust, writing in 2000, claims that international law does not permit immunity of a person accused o f a international customary crime.5 He refers to the ICTR case o f Prosecutor v. Kambanda where a former Prime Minister o f Rwanda was charged with genocide.6 It is quite correct to say that, before the ICTR, Kambanda was unable to rely on his status as a government official to avoid prosecution. Indeed the tribunal did not spend much of its time looking at the issue of the accused’s status barring its jurisdiction.