By Arthur Asiimwe
KIGALI, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Rwanda's U.N.-backed genocide court winds up its work this year but many survivors say it has failed to prosecute enough of those responsible for the slaughter.
The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) began work in 1997 targeting the key suspects in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which claimed 800,000 lives.
Over the last decade, the tribunal has completed fewer than four cases a year on average, prompting anger from survivors who say too few suspected ringleaders have been dealt with.
Prosecutors will never get through the ongoing cases of 27 suspects, they say. Six suspects are still to face trial.
"If for 10 years the ICTR has tried 35 people, how do you expect them to try over 25 cases in one single year?" said Theodore Simburudali, head of genocide survivors' group Ibuka.
"The only viable solution they have is to send these fugitives back home."
The ICTR is expected to finish first instance trials by December this year, while appeal trials will end by 2010.
"The ICTR's commitment to and optimism for attainment of this target remains as strong as before," ICTR prosecutor Hassan Jallow told the U.N. Security Council in December.
Another 16 fugitives including Felicien Kabuga -- believed to have been a key financier of genocide -- remain on the run.
Kigali does not want the tribunal's mandate extended, preferring all pending files be handed to its jurisdiction.
It plans to push for a Security Council resolution this year that would compel member states to arrest and send genocide suspects to Rwanda, even if they do not have extradition treaties with the tiny central African state.
"We want the resolution to compel nations to cooperate with Rwanda as the primary jurisdiction. This will be the only viable, permanent and sustainable solution in dealing with this question," said Martin Ngoga, Rwanda's chief prosecutor.
FAIR TRIAL?
Rwanda is preparing its own list of some 300 fugitives it says are still at large.
But rights groups have criticised moves to transfer cases to Rwanda, questioning the independence of its courts.
Detainees at the ICTR facility in Arusha, northern Tanzania, have also protested against the proposed transfers, saying they fear they will not get a fair trial in Rwanda.
Simburudali, of the survivors' group Ibuka, acknowledged some of the concerns. But he said victims needed to feel more connected to justice being dispensed in another country.
"Our courts might be having weaknesses and may not meet international standards," he said. "But at least we, the survivors, see some justice being done, not like the one delivered thousands of kilometres away."
Rwanda has already tried thousands of lower-level suspects, either in its regular national courts, or in a special system of traditional justice known as "gacaca" courts.
Some rights groups have also criticised the ICTR for failing to prosecute members of President Paul Kagame's government who were accused of war crimes during the civil war.
But many Rwandans recognise that without the ICTR, some of the top leaders of their country's slaughter would be free.
"It has set the record straight by bringing to justice some key planners of the killings and all cases it has handled have been symbolic," Chief Prosecutor Ngoga told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by George Obulutsa in Nairobi; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Giles Elgood)