EMMANUEL DEFOULOY, Brussels | Wednesday
FOUR Rwandans, including two Roman Catholic nuns, have gone on trial in Belgium for their part in the 1994 massacre of an estimated 800_000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the central African state.
Vincent Ntezimana, 39, Alphonse Higaniro, 51, and nuns Consolata Mukangango, 42, and Julienne Mukabutera, 36, are charged with genocide.
All four, Belgian residents, surrendered voluntarily and have pleaded not guilty to the charges, based on a 1993 law that enables Belgian courts to try human rights atrocities committed abroad.
If convicted on the charges – “serious violations of international humanitarian rights” – they face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The trial marks the first time that a civilian jury outside Rwanda has tried suspects for genocide.
Ntezimana, a university professor, and Higaniro, a former minister and businessman, are suspected of inciting and organising the slaying of Tutsis in the Butare region.
Mukangango (Sister Gertrude) and Mukabutera (Sister Maria Kisito) are suspected of handing over several thousand people who took refuge in the Sovu convent to the Hutu killers.
Sister Gertrude was the mother superior at the convent.
Troops of Rwanda’s then Hutu army systematically slaughtered minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the genocide between April and July 1994 before the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front seized power and ended the massacres.
Lawyers for Higaniro promptly challenged the legal competency of Belgian justice in the matter, arguing that their client had already been appeared before the UN’s Rwanda tribunal.
Lawyers for the nuns disputed 62 pages of written testimony from Emmanuel Rekeharo, militia leader in the Sovu area during the genocide, on grounds that he cannot personally appear before the trial.
Rekeharo now is behind bars in Rwanda, under a death sentence.
Some of his testimony, given to prosecutors from the UN tribunal, has been released by African Rights, a non-governmental organization. In it, he is quoted as saying that the nuns “shared our hatred for Tutsis.” – AFP