Rwanda's ex-speaker gets life for genocide

Rwanda’s former speaker of Parliament Alfred Mukezamfura was sentenced to life in prison for inciting hatred during the 1994 genocide in which about 800 000 people died, state radio reported on Thursday.

Mukezamfura, who was parliamentary speaker for five years up to 2008, was sentenced in absentia by a traditional court known as gacaca that found him guilty of “inciting hatred and genocide”.

His charges stem from an editorial he wrote in a government-run newspaper in May 1994 at the height of the massacre entitled “The hero is dead” in reference to then president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death sparked the genocide.

Radio Rwanda said he had had an indirect role in the massacre through his “inciteful” writing.

A senior official in President Paul Kagame’s government, Mukezamfura fled the country in March to Belgium where he has sought asylum.

The gacaca courts combine modern law with old-style village assemblies where elders settle disputes.

The alleged ringleaders at national level are being tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which sits in Arusha in neighbouring Tanzania.—Sapa-AFP