18 år efter, at mindst 800.000 blev nedslagtet på bestialsk vis i det lille centralafrikanske land indhenter lovens lange arm en af de angiveligt hovedansvarlige – en person, som ifølge anklagen ikke ønskede, at der skulle vises ofrene nåde.
A former Rwandan youth minister has been given a life sentence after being found guilty of playing a key role in the 1994 genocide (folkedrab), BBC online reports Thursday.
Callixte Nzabonimana was found guilty of genocide, conspiracy, incitement and extermination by the UN tribunal based in Arusha, Tanzania.
His lawyer said, that he will appeal. Ethnic Hutu militia and soldiers killed some 800.000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in 100 days between April and June 1994.
“The trial chamber found that… Nzabonimana instigated the killing of Tutsis. It also found Nzabonimana guilty of entering into two separate agreements to kill Tutsis,” the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said in a statement.
The conviction of the former youth minister hinged (stod og faldt) on his participation, alongside other members of the government, in a meeting held on 18 April, 1994 in the town of Murambi, in the central Gitarama province.
This meeting led to “an agreement” between Nzabonimana and other ministers “to encourage the killing of Tutsis… with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Tutsi population as such in Gitarama prefecture,” said the court’s verdict.
The three ICTR judges ruled that Nzabonimana used public appearances in different parts of Gitarama to incite people to kill Tutsis.
Nzabonimana, 59, was arrested in Tanzania in February 2008. The ICTR – set up in Arusha shortly after the 1994 genocide – is due to wind up its work by the end of 2014.
