The tribunal was prompted by widespread massacres of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda following an April 1994 plane crash that killed the country's president. The Secretary-General reported on human rights violations, and the Security Council requested a commission of experts to analyze information about the killings. The October 1994 report of the Commission of Experts concluded that individuals from both sides of the civil war in the country perpetrated serious breaches of international humanitarian law and recommended the expansion of the jurisdiction of an international tribunal dealing with human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia. However, the Security Council decided to establish an independent tribunal that would share certain organs with the Yugoslav tribunal. The tribunal's first plenary session took place June 26-30, 1995 at The Hague. The tribunal made public its first indictments of 12 persons in December 1995. It announced further indictments in February 1996. Footnotes