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Rwandan up for killing tourists
22/07/2004 22:10 - (SA)
Kampala - A 30-year-old Rwandan former soldier was charged in Kampala late Wednesday with the 1999 murder of eight foreign tourists in a national park in southwest Uganda, court sources said.
"Jean Paul Bizimana, also known as Xavier Van-Ndame, appeared before magistrate Richard Baguma and was charged with nine counts of murder, but was not allowed to enter any plea because the case can only be heard by the High Court," an official at Kampala district court told AFP on Thursday.
"All the counts are capital offences triable by the High Court and punishable with death. The magistrate's court had no jurisdiction to enter plea. It only read the charges to the accused and remanded him at Luzira prison until August 2 when the cases come back for mention," the official added.
About 100 attackers, believed to have been Rwandan Iterahamwe militias, attacked a group of tourists and their guides at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park March 1, 1999.
After killing a game warden by setting fire to him, the attackers abducted 14 of the tourists and killed eight of them: two Americans, four Britons and two New Zealanders.
The prosecution alleges that Bizimana and others still at large attacked the park and kidnapped the tourists.
The tourists were abducted at a camp ground on the edge of Bwindi National Park, the starting point for visitors hoping to have a glimpse on the over 300 rare mountain gorillas, made famous by the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist.
The attackers are said to have been among Hutu fighters who fled Rwanda in 1994, after massacring almost a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a government-orchestrated genocide.
One of the captives, then French deputy ambassador to Uganda Anne Peltier, was freed, but handed a message to the authorities indicating that the action was being taken because of US- and British-government support for Rwandan government.
The US government offered $5m reward for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.
Three other suspected Rwandan rebels - Leonidas Bimenyiamana, 34, Francois Karake, 38, and Gregoire Nyaminami, 32 - were charged in a US court in March 2003 with murder, conspiracy and other counts over the killing of two American tourists after they were arrested in Rwanda.
- AFP
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