The hearing of the defense case of a militia chief at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has been suspended indefinitely due to allegations of partiality.

The defense counsel led by Canadian lawyer Normand Marquis has argued that the rights of his client, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, had been breached.

Ntahobali is standing trial for genocide and crimes against humanity at the United Nations court in Arusha of northern Tanzania and he still has three more witnesses including himself to go before winding up his defense case.

Ntahobali started his defense in November last year and has so far called 21 witnesses to testify at the UN court.

The accused was ordered by the ICTR to start testifying on his own behalf from March 2 and the judges rejected a defense motion demanding that the accused testify after all other witnesses.

"I ask you to suspend his testimony until the motion filed with the bureau is decided upon," said Lawyer Marquis.

The ICTR was established in 1998 to deal with the trials of the Rwandan genocide suspects and accused. The genocide in 1994 claimed 800,000 lives in a space of 100 days.

Source: Xinhua