4 held for killing 13 clergymen
2008-06-12 10:50
Kigali - The Rwandan army said on Thursday it had arrested four officers, including a brigadier general, over the murder of 13 senior Catholic clergy during the 1994 genocide.
The four were arrested on Wednesday, days after the prosecutor general of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) charged that members of President Paul Kagame's former rebellion had murdered the 13 clergymen.
The arrests were made after a joint investigation by the ICTR and Rwandan prosecutors into the killings of the Roman Catholic clergy on June 05 1994, said army spokesperson Jill Rutaremara.
"The four suspects who are jointly accused will appear in court soon," the statement added.
800 000 people slaughtered
The 13 clergy, including an archbishop and several bishops, were nearly all from the Hutu majority that perpetrated the genocide against minority Tutsis.
Kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) fought to end the genocide in 1994 and had been in power since.
The military statement said Rwanda's military prosecutors had "since 1994 presided over 43 war crimes and revenge crimes committed after the 1994 liberation war".
The Tanzania-based ICTR was investigating and bringing to justice suspects involved in the genocide.
Its prosecutor general, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, told the United Nations Security Council this month that progress had been made in the probe into the murder of the clergymen.
Yet the ICTR had so far only prosecuted members of the former Hutu regime and Jallow stressed that he would let Rwandan justice press on with proceedings so long as they met international standards.
The United Nations estimated that some 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in Rwanda, between April and July 1994.