Genocide mastermind gets life
2008-12-18 14:47
Arusha - A UN-backed tribunal on Thursday sentenced the man accused of having masterminded the country's 1994 genocide to life in prison for his part in the massacres that killed some 800 000 people.
Theoneste Bagosora, who prosecutors had portrayed as the mastermind of the genocide was convicted "of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," said the judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Immediately after the verdict, Bagosora's lawyer said his client would challenge his conviction.
"Bagosora has decided to appeal. It is a disappointment," said Raphael Constant of the verdict.
Former choir boy
Bagosora, a church choir boy in his youth who rose to become a key officer in the Rwandan military, was tried along with three co-defendants.
Two of the co-defendants, also ex-military officers, were also sentenced to life, while the third was acquitted.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Bagosora, who had pleaded not guilty and argued that he "never killed anybody".
The genocide saw extremists from Rwanda's Hutu majority slaughter minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, killing 800 000 people over 100 days. The massacres shocked the world and led to accusations that Western nations watched them unfold without moving to stop them.
The slaughter is thought to have been triggered by the downing of a plane carrying Rwanda's then president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and his Burundian counterpart on April 6, 1994.
The tribunal ruled that Bagosora was responsible for the assassination of former prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, as well as the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and several politicians.
It also ruled that Bagosora, the cabinet director of Rwanda's defence ministry when the genocide began, was behind the massacre of Tutsis at road blocks in the capital Kigali and in his home region of Gisenyi in the north.
Bagosora was arrested in Cameroon in 1996 and his trial began in 2002.