Court to sentence ex-Rwandan officers
2011-05-17 11:47
Arusha - A UN court was to hand down verdicts on Tuesday for four ex-Rwandan security chiefs accused of genocide, including the heads of the military and paramilitary police during the 1994 mass slaughter.
Former army chief Augustin Bizimungu and Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the one-time head of the gendarmerie, are two of the most senior people to be tried by the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in connection with the genocide which left some 800 000 people dead.
The two generals are being tried alongside two other senior officers: Major Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, the ex-commander of the reconnaissance battalion and Captain Innocent Sagahutu, who headed a squadron within that unit.
The verdict comes seven years after the start of their trial and more than 11 years after the arrest of Ndindiliyimana.
In a 2004 indictment, Ndindiliyimana was alleged to have conspired with his co-accused in the planning and commission of a plan to exterminate Tutsis in Rwanda.
He is also charged with responsibility for atrocities allegedly committed by forces under his control, including the deaths of 10 Belgian peacekeepers which sparked the withdrawal of all Belgian troops from the UN mission.
Verdict
The case has been effectively adjourned since June 2009 when prosecutors requested life sentences for all four defendants. Lawyers for the four asked for their acquittal and the case has been adjourned ever since.
Ndindiliyimana was arrested in January 2000 in Belgium and Nzuwonemeye the following month in France. Sagahutu was detained in Denmark and Bizimungu in 2002 in Angola.
The long-running case is known as the Military II trial.
In the Military I trial, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, presented by the prosecutor as the brains behind the 1994 genocide, was sentenced to life in prison in December 2008, along with two other senior military figures.
Bagosora appealed, and the hearing ran from March 30 to April 01, but the appeal verdict has yet to be handed down.
The ICTR, based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, was established in late 1994 to try the perpetrators of Rwanda's genocide which claimed some 800 000 lives - mainly minority Tutsis - in a span of 100 days.
- SAPA
