'Genocide minister' gets life
2003-05-15 12:41
Arusha - The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on Thursday sentenced Eliezer Niyitegeka, the central African country's information minister during the 1994 genocide, to life imprisonment for genocide.
Niyitegeka, 50, faced eight charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the massacre of Tutsi civilians in western Rwanda's Bisesero hills between April and June 1994.
He was not found guilty of rape, one of the charges brought against him.
Up to a million minority Tutsis and Hutus opposed to the organised ethnic slaughter that ravaged tiny Rwanda for 100 days were killed in the genocide.
Pronouncing the sentence, South African judge Navanethem Pillay said: "Mr Niyitegeka organised the genocide, incited people to commit it and himself massacred Tutsis in the hills of Bisesero."
The defence had entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf and demanded that he be acquitted.
Niyitegeka was arrested in Kenya on February 9, 1999 and transferred to the seat of the ICTR, in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
His trial began on June 17 last year and went into deliberation at the end of February.
"The accused was a minister, in other words at the top of the government hierarchy. He was a journalist, someone well known, a reference to society. As a minister, he was committed to upholding the constitution but instead he violated it" by taking part in the genocide, the prosecution said during Niyitegeka's trial.
Niyitegeka's sentence was one of the most rapid handed down by the ICTR, which has come under severe criticism for its slowness.
Since it was created by the United Nations in November 1994 to try the leaders of the Rwandan genocide, the ICTR has convicted 11 people and acquitted one. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA