A judge sentenced a Rwandan rebel on Monday to 15 years in jail, a week after convicting him for killing eight tourists from the United States, Britain and New Zealand and a Ugandan tour guide who were on a gorilla-watching trip in 1999.
High Court Judge John Bosco Katutsi passed the sentence after Jean-Paul Bizimana, alias Xavier Van Dame, appealed for lenient punishment. He faced a possible death penalty.
”My Lord, I pray for lenience because I have a family to look after,” Bizimana said in court.
”Those you killed also had families,” Katutsi responded sharply.
”These people were killed in cold blood and you were part of the gang… The deceased came to Uganda for pleasure, and they went back in coffins.”
The judge, however, rejected calls from prosecutors for the death sentence. He permitted the prosecution to appeal the sentence at the Constitutional Court.
Three other men were arrested in March 2003 in connection with the killings, and have been sent to the United States to stand trial in the deaths of the two Americans.
Rwanda rebels hacked and bludgeoned the travellers to death in a remote rain forest near Uganda’s borders with Congo and Rwanda where the party had gone to see the rare animals. The rebels specifically targeted English-speaking people in a bid to weaken US and British support for the new Rwandan government.
Bizimana, a member of the former Rwandan army — which played a key role in the 1994 genocide of more than a half-million people in his country — was arrested in 2004 near the border with Rwanda and taken to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, to face nine counts of murder.
The victims were Americans Rob Haubner and his wife, Susan Miller, of Portland, Ore.; Rhonda Avis (27) and Michelle Strathern (26) from New Zealand; Britons Martin Friend (24) Steven Robert (27) and Mark Lindgren (23) and Joanne Cotton, a driver for the London-based outfitter that organised trips to Africa, and Ugandan
guide Ross Wagaba.
They had been in a group of about 30 tourists visiting Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
The rebels invaded the tourist campground on March 1, 1999, and forced 17 tourists who spoke English to remove their shoes and begin marching, the indictment said. It said the rebels killed a park guide by pushing him under a truck and setting it on fire.
During the march, eight people were killed with machetes and axes. Miller also was allegedly raped by one of the suspects, the indictment said.
Nine people survived, including one who was given a note by the rebels warning the United States and Britain not to interfere in Rwanda. Similar notes were found on the bodies of two of those killed.
The United States and Britain were the largest donors to Rwanda, which was rebuilding after the 100-day genocide. – Sapa-AP