Ex-army chief pleads innocent
2002-08-21 13:17
Arusha, Tanzania - Major General Augustin Bizimungu, the man who ran Rwanda's armed forces during the 1994 genocide in the central African nation, pleaded innocent Wednesday before a UN tribunal to charges of involvement in the 100-day slaughter in which at least half a million people died.
Bizimungu (50) entered his plea after listening grimly as
charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and rape, were read out by the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda before Judge Pavel
Dolenc of Slovenia.
Although most of the victims were members of Rwanda's Tutsi
minority, several thousand victims, including Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, were political moderates from the Hutu majority.
The prosecution accused Bizimungu, a Hutu, of personally
participating in the planning and the execution of the genocide.
The indictment holds him, as senior army commander, responsible for the conduct of his subordinates.
No date was set for a trial.
Shot down plane
The prosecution also accused Bizimungu of forming and arming
Hutu militia called Interahamwe which carried out much of the
slaughter that began the day after President Jovenal Habyarimana's plane was mysteriously shot down on April 6, 1994 as he was returning from neighbouring Tanzania.
"Bizimungu praised the efficiency of militiamen and underlined
the necessity to arm them better to kill the Tutsis," the
prosecution said, adding that he "participated in the planning,
preparation or execution of a common scheme, strategy or plan to
commit the atrocities of killing the Tutsis".
Bizimungu fled into exile, first in Europe and later in Zaire,
now Congo, after Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front ousted the Hutu extremist government and took power in July 1994.
He was transferred to the Arusha tribunal on August 4 from Angola after officials there said two days earlier that they had found him in a camp for demobilised Unita fighters who had previously been based in neighbouring Congo.
While in Congo, Bizimungu formed the rebel Army for the
Liberation of Rwanda, made up of Interahamwe and former Rwandan
soldiers, that attempted to seize power in Rwanda in 1997-98 and
last year.
Bizimungu's arrest came two weeks after the US State
Department announced on July 29 that it would pay up to $5m for information leading to the arrest and transfer to Arusha of nine genocide suspects, including Bizimungu. He is the first of the group to be detained.
Indicted
The tribunal has jointly indicted him together with General
Augustin Ndindiliyimana, former head of the Rwandan national
police; Major Protais Mpiranya, commander of the presidential guard; Major Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, commander of the FAR
reconnaissance battalion and his second, Captain Innocent Sagahutu.
Ndindiliyimana and Sagahutu are in custody in Arusha awaiting
trial.
There are 52 detainees in the tribunal's detention facility.
Trials are in progress for 22 detainees at the court established in November 1994.
Among those on trial is Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, who was
commander of the Kanombe air base in the Rwandan capital, Kigali,
when Habyarimana's plane went down.
According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, it was Bagosora who pushed to have Bizimungu, then a commander in northwestern Rwanda, named to take over the army. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA