Nairobi | Friday
A RWANDAN former priest sought for genocide has been arrested in Cameroon on a warrant for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the court announced on Friday in a statement.
Hormidas Nsengimana is accused of leading a killer squad of employees of the Christ-Roi church college in Nyanza in attacks on ethnic Tutsis in 1994 when he was rector of the institution in Rwanda’s southern Butare district.
The ICTR, sitting in Arusha, Tanzania, wants Nsengimana for trial on charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
The court also announced that one of its former defence investigators, Joseph Nzabirinda, was transferred Wednesday to the cells in Arusha after being arrested in Belgium in December last year.
Nzabirinda is accused of several rapes in the Butare district during the genocide, when Hutu militias and then government troops killed at least 800 000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus between April and July 1994.
Nzabirinda had been working with the defence team of another genocide suspect, Sylvain Nsabimana, until he was sacked when court officials found he was using fake identity papers.
The ICTR, set up by the United Nations at the end of 1994, has handed down nine verdicts, including five life jail sentences. About 30 suspects are still being held in the Arusha cells. – AFP