Rwanda, UN sign genocide deal
2008-03-04 21:31
Kigali - The Rwandan government and the United Nations signed a deal on Tuesday which allows detainees sentenced by the UN-backed court on the Rwanda genocide to be jailed in the central African nation.
The deal was signed in Kigali by Rwanda's Foreign Minister Charles Murigande and Adama Dieng, the registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
"Today's signature marks a milestone in the co-operation between the ICTR and Rwanda," Dieng said during the ceremony.
He explained that the agreement meant that Rwanda fulfilled all the conditions for ICTR sentences to be enforced in its prisons.
Six other countries have similar agreements: Benin, France, Italy, Mali, Swaziland and Sweden.
Six men sentenced by the ICTR are currently serving prison sentences in Mali and one man in Italy.
The ICTR is tasked with hunting down and bringing to court the main architects and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which left about 800 000 people dead, according to the UN.
Prisoners and detainees in Arusha, where the ICTR is based, immediately protested against the decision, arguing that their transfer to Rwandan prisons would amount to a death sentence.
In a letter, the detainees branded the agreement a plot by the Rwandan Patriotic Front of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a member of the Tutsi minority targeted in the 1994 massacres.
- SAPA