Three guilty over Rwanda genocide
800,000 died in the 1994 Rwanda genocide
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Thursday, 18, Dec 2008 02:34
Three people have been found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for their role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Theoneste Bagosora, 67, was the most high-profile of the trio found guilty by the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania today.
Bagosara conspired to commit genocide ahead of the massacre of 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.
He was an army colonel and director of the cabinet in the ministry of defence at the time of the genocide, in which extremist Interahamwe Hutu massacred men, women and children.
Prosecutors had said Bagosara returned from failed talks with Tutsi rebels in Tanzania planning to "prepare the apocalypse" as early as 1990.
And he has now been convicted on 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
He and Para Commando Battalion commander Major Aloys Ntabakuze and Gisenyi sector commander Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva had pleaded not guilty but all were convicted.
General Gratien Kabiligi, head of the military operations bureau of the Rwandan army's general staff, was acquitted of all charges.
The spark needed to trigger the killings came on April 6th 1994 when a plane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda was shot down.
A source within the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) had told inthenews.co.uk earlier this week it was confident the court would deliver the right verdict.
The ICTR, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania, had previously delivered 34 judgements of which five were acquittals. Its UN mandate lasts until the end of this year.