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Genocide councillor freed
03/03/2008 20:07 - (SA)
Arusha - A Rwandan former councillor, Vincent Rutaganira, has been freed by the Tanzania-based tribunal trying key genocide suspects after serving six years behind bars, a court official said on Monday.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) released Rutaganira on Sunday morning and he was "currently somewhere in Arusha", where the court is based in north Tanzania, the head of its press service, Bocar Sy, told AFP.
Rutangira, 68, was in March 2005 convicted of "complicity in extermination" for failing to protect minority Tutsis against Hutu extremist militias and the army when he was a municipal councillor at Kibuye during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
He had already been detained by the ICTR since March 2002, suffers from diabetes and a permanent physical disability, so he will be housed by the court until its administration finds a country ready to take him in, the court announced last week.
Sy said Rutangira was "very moved" on being freed.
He is the second person convicted of a role in the genocide by the ICTR to be released after serving his sentence. The first was an Adventist preacher, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, who died in January 2007, a month after being freed.
Rutaganira left the ICTR prison two days ahead of the signing by Rwanda's government and the United Nations of an agreement under which the tribunal may send some of its convicts to finish serving their terms in Rwanda.
This deal, set for signing on Tuesday, has been strongly denounced by the detainees and their lawyers.
However, in its early years, the special court set up by the UN Security Council was criticised by the Rwandan authorities for being slow to carry out its task of trying key suspects in the genocide of April-July 1994.
About 800 000 people were killed, mostly Tutsis with moderate Hutus opposed to the massacre, according to the UN figure.
The ICTR has so far convicted 30 suspects and acquitted five others.
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