U.N. Court, on Appeal, Acquits 2 Rwandans in 1994 Genocide

February 11, 2014
NAIROBI, Kenya — Twenty years after the small African nation of Rwanda
descended into a frenzy of killing, a special United Nations court
announced Tuesday that two high-ranking Rwandan officers convicted of
taking part in the 1994 genocide had been acquitted on appeal.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha,
Tanzania, said that Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the former chief of staff
of the Rwandan paramilitary police, and François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye,
the former commander of a military reconnaissance battalion, were not
guilty of the charges.
Mr. Ndindiliyimana was one of the highest-ranking officers convicted
of taking part in the genocide. He was tried alongside Augustin
Bizimungu, Rwanda's former army chief of staff, who was sentenced in
2011 to 30 years in prison. General Bizimungu also appealed his
conviction; the special court has requested more information in the
case.
Commemorations of the 20th anniversary of the genocide, in which
800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in just 100 days,
have already begun, even as efforts to locate and punish those
responsible go on.
Last week in Paris, a French court opened the genocide trial of a
former Rwandan intelligence chief in the first prosecution there of
former officials and others who fled Rwanda.
While international courts have been handling the biggest cases,
people accused of being lower-level perpetrators are tried in Rwandan
community courts known as gacacas. Ten years ago, President Paul
Kagame released tens of thousands of people from jail and ordered them
to face the traditional courts, where killers have publicly confessed
to slaying neighbors and even friends, as part of a broader search for
reconciliation.
Mr. Ndindiliyimana, who was arrested in Belgium in 2000, was convicted
in 2011 of genocide, extermination as a crime against humanity and
murder, and he was sentenced to 11 years. He was freed after time
served.
The trial chamber initially ruled that police officers assigned to
guard Mr. Ndindiliyimana's home in Rwanda had provided weapons to
Interahamwe — the Hutu militia that carried out the genocide against
the Tutsis — and assisted in a deadly attack on Kansi Parish. "The
appeals chamber finds that the trial chamber erred in concluding that
Ndindiliyimana exercised effective control over the gendarmes," the
court said Tuesday, adding that it was not clear whether the police
officers in question had participated in the Kansi attack.
The court also found that Mr. Ndindiliyimana did not appear to have
had control over a group of police officers involved in a separate
attack on St.-André College in April 1994 because "the operational
command over the majority of gendarmerie units was transferred to the
Rwandan Army" by that point.
Mr. Nzuwonemeye was arrested in France in 2000. He was convicted of
aiding and abetting in the 1994 killing of Prime Minister Agathe
Uwilingiyimana as well as the killing of Belgian peacekeepers. "Not
all Rwandan Army soldiers who were in the vicinity of the prime
minister's residence were searching for her or contributed to her
killing," the special court found in acquitting him of that charge.
The court also overturned Mr. Nzuwonemeye's conviction in the case of
the peacekeepers. The conviction of his deputy, Innocent Sagahutu, for
aiding and abetting in their deaths was upheld, but his conviction for
their murder was overturned.
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SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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