At UN Rwanda genocide tribunal, former minister sentenced to 35 years in jail

The Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal is Hassan Bubacar Jallow (photo), a Gambian lawyer and jurist

Hassan Bubacar JallowDec. 20 (UN).─ A trial chamber of the United Nations war crimes tribunal set up in the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda today sentenced a former government minister, Augustin Ngirabatware, to 35 years imprisonment for genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and rape as a crime against humanity.

According to a news release from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the court's Trial Chamber II found that Mr. Ngirabatware – then serving as Rwanda's Minister of Planning – directly and publicly incited the killing of Tutsis at the Cyanika-Gisa roadblock in February 1994.

It further found that Mr. Ngirabatware instigated and aided and abetted the attacks and killings of Tutsis in April 1994 in the Nyamyumba commune through his words and actions in distributing weapons at two roadblocks there. At least some of these weapons were used by the Hutu Interahamwe militia to kill Tutsis.

The chamber also found Mr. Ngirabatware guilty of participating in a joint criminal enterprise, which was in existence by 7 April 1994, and whose members shared the common purpose of destroying, in whole or in part, the Tutsi ethnic group ...

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