|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Rwandans get 10, 12 years for war crimes
Two Rwandan businessmen were sentenced to 10 and 12 years in prison Wednesday after being convicted for helping Hutu militias who killed thousands during the 1994 Rwanda genocide. While the prosecutor sought life terms — or at least 25 years in prison as permitted under Belgium law — the judge and jury agreed on lesser sentences because the businessmen had no direct role in the killings. The two were convicted of participating in plans to massacre people at a church and a nearby municipal hall where Tutsis and moderate Hutus met. The prosecution said the two offered transport for the killers and helped arrange for weapons.
The court handed down a 12-year sentence to Etienne Nzabonimana, 53, who was convicted Tuesday on 56 counts of aiding and abetting in the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Kibungo, southwest of the Rwandan capital, Kigali. His half-brother Samuel Ndashyikirwa, 43, was given 10 years in jail after being found guilty on 23 counts. "It was people like them who also have a crime to answer for, just as the people who wielded the machetes," Luc Walleyn, a lawyer representing victims' families, told VRT radio during a break in the trial. The two lived in Belgium when they were arrested in 2002. They denied any wrongdoing and entered innocent pleas during the trial at which about 170 witnesses testified. Meanwhile, in Paris, judicial officials said the prosecutor of a French military tribunal will request preliminary hearings for six Rwandans who alleged that French troops had a role in the 1994 genocide. The move comes in response to a lawsuit the six filed in February, which accused troops of "complicity in genocide" and "crimes against humanity." The request was expected in the coming days, but will take much longer for the army court, the only one capable of judging actions by French soldiers on duty, to carry it out, officials said. The judge must either ask Rwandan judges to hear testimony from the six — all of whom live in the central African nation — or travel there himself. It was the second trial in a Belgian court involving Rwanda's slaughter of the early 1990s. In 2001, a Brussels court convicted two Roman Catholic nuns, a former government minister and a university professor for their role in the atrocities of 1994. They received prison sentences of 12 to 20 years. Belgium held that groundbreaking trial, hailed as a milestone in international law, under a 1993 law that gave local courts jurisdiction over violations of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, no matter where they occurred. However, that law was watered down in 2003, limiting its scope after activists tried to bring cases against world leaders including President George Bush. As Belgian residents, the two Rwandan suspects still fell under the new application of the rules.
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
