Ottawa’s bid to deport a former Rwandan political activist accused of inciting genocide and racial hatred in his home country was rejected yesterday when a Federal Court of Appeal judge said key witnesses showed bias. A three-member panel of justices unanimously dismissed charges that a speech that Léon Mugesera, a Quebec City resident for the past decade, delivered in 1992 incited a massacre. “There is nothing in the evidence to suggest that Mr. Mugesera intended, under the cover of a bellicose speech that would be justified in the circumstances, to impel toward racism and murder,” Judge Robert Décary wrote. “There is simply no evidence, on a balance of probabilities, that Mr. Mugesera had any guilty intent.” Canadian immigration officials alleged that Mr. Mugesera, a Hutu activist, committed a crime against humanity and incited murder, hatred and genocide and encouraged attacks against the Tutsi minority in a speech he made at a political rally in November of 1992. Rwanda was in the midst of bloody confrontations between the ruling Hutus and the Tutsi minority, which in 1994 led to the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis as part of an ethnic and political cleansing campaign. Full Story
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