Rwanda is to release a large number of prisoners accused of participating in the country’s 1994 genocide who have confessed to their roles in massacres that claimed the lives of up to a million people, the chief prosecutor said on Wednesday.
Jean de Dieu Mucyo said ”several tens of thousands” of prisoners have made confessions while in preventative detention but declined to say how many of them would be freed.
The release plan comes as Rwanda prepares to commemorate the 10th anniversary in April of the 1994 genocide when members of the country’s Tutsi minority and Hutu sympathisers were killed in 100 days of slaughter by Hutu extremists.
About 22 000 genocide suspects were released temporarily from the country’s overcrowded jails in May 2003, pending verdicts from the courts.
”Since then many prisoners have made confessions, above all in view of the deadline date,” said Mucyo, referring to the chance given to suspects to confess before March 15 and have their sentences reduced by as much as half.
This means that some suspects have served out in preventative detention more time than the sentences that would have been handed out for their crimes, allowing for their release from jail.
The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that about 89 000 prisoners are crowded into the jails of the central African country.
Mucyo did not give a date for the release of the prisoners, but said it was unlikely that this would take place before or during the official commemoration of the genocide.
The release is set to prove controversial after many survivors of the genocide were shocked by the liberation of the 22 000 suspects in May last year.
According to Mucyo, it has yet to be decided if prisoners accused of ethnic ”divisionism” and damaging state security, such as former president Pasteur Bizimungu, would be affected by the measure.
After their release, the prisoners are to be sent to so-called ”solidarity camps” for one or two months. The camps are aimed at ”re-educating” former fighters and genocide suspects and informing them of the changes in Rwanda since 1994.
The backlog of prisoners awaiting trial had forced the Rwandan authorities to use mass trials and also to set up so-called gacaca, or village courts, across the country to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice.
The suspected masterminds of the genocide are, however, being tried outside Rwanda at a United Nations court, based in Arusha in neighbouring Tanzania and set up in November 1994.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has so far handed out 17 guilty verdicts and one acquittal, but has frequently come under fire, not least from the Tutsi-led Rwandan government and genocide survivors.
So far, no one found guilty by the court has been sent to a Rwandan prison, but the tribunal announced on Wednesday it was considering transferring some of its cases to the authorities in Kigali. — Sapa-AFP