More than 100 prisoners suspected of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide were made to face the perpetrators and victims of the massacre in a dramatic public ceremony on Sunday in the southwestern town of Butare.
Most were granted bail provisional bail pending their trial.
The suspects, whose police files are incomplete, were taken to Butare’s football stadium and presented to over 2 000 prisoners who have confessed to taking part in the genocide and thousands of members of the public.
Public prosecutors asked the public and perpetrators alike to say whether each of the suspects had been involved in the massacres.
All suspects who were not firmly identified by the crowd were granted bail on the spot, pending trial by a village court.
The operation, bringing hundreds of genocide victims face-to-face with those who committed the crimes, left many crying and shaking with the pain of remembered suffering.
Some became hysterical as the tales of atrocities unfolded.
The Rwandan government organised the first public presentation ceremony in September 2000, but Sunday’s event in Butare was the first to be held in large city.
”The operation allows us to release prisoners without legal files, the elderly and the sick… and prepare the population for the future release of prisoners following the Gacaca trials,” said a public prosecutor.
The innovative system of village courts, called Gacaca, was launched in Rwanda earlier this year and is due to handle the trial of more than 100 000 genocide suspects.
The scheme, a resurrection of traditional village conflict resolution tribunals, is massive in scale, involving more than a quarter of a million judges in 11 000 jurisdictions.
They will hear evidence from witnesses and pronounce judgment on most of the 104 000 people currently behind bars for their alleged role in the genocide.
Some 130 prisoners were freed last August in the central town of Gitarama following an event similar to the Butare stadium confrontation.
In Gitarama, some 1 200 self-confessed genocide perpetrators were taken through the streets and introduced to the local people. – Sapa-AFP