THURSDAY, 5.00PM
SIX Burundians convicted of taking part in ethnic massacres in the tiny central African country’s civil war were executed by hanging Thursday, officials said.
They were the first executions in Burundi since the early 1980s, and observers said they were designed to underscore the government’s determination to bring war criminals to justice.
The six defendants — three Hutus, two Tutsis and a member of the minor Twa ethnic group — had all lost their appeals after being sentenced to death, and were hanged at 4.00am (0200 GMT) at the capital’s Mpimba prison.
Among those executed was the former principal of the high school in the central city of Kimbimba, Firmat Niynkenguruka, who was convicted of having burned dozens of Tutsi students alive in the wake of the 1993 coup attempt that sparked the civil war.
Since war crimes trials started last year some 60 people have been sentenced to death by Burundian courts.
Burundi has been torn by ethnic violence since the October 1993 assassination of the country’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, which plunged the country into a cycle of massacres and reprisals that spiralled quickly into a civil war which mirrored that in neighbouring Rwanda.