Arusha, Tanzania – An international court handed down a 15-year
jail term for genocide today to a Rwandan former mayor who failed to stop police
bulldozing a church, burying nearly 2 000 people sheltered inside.
Gregory Ndahimana (59) mayor of the Kivumu district during the 1994
genocide, helped fuel the massacre with his presence outside the Catholic church
at Nyange, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) ruled.
“The majority of the trial chamber... condemns Ndahimana to a
single sentence of 15 years imprisonment,” Judge Florence Arrey announced.
“The presence of the accused at the scene of the crime had an
encouraging effect,” the ruling added.
Prosecutors alleged that the former mayor had planned and ordered
the massacre of Nyange and opened fire himself to start the killing.
However, those allegations were dismissed by the judges who said
they had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Ndahimana is the third person to be tried and convicted by the ICTR
for the killing at Nyange.
The ICTR, based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, was
established to try the key perpetrators of the genocide which claimed some 800
000 lives, mainly minority Tutsis, in a span of 100 days.
