A U.N. court in its trial of the ‘main brains’ behind Rwanda’s 1994 genocide Monday pronounced a 30-year jail sentence to a former interior minister who has been charged of cheating thousands of people to hide on a hill before they were killed.
The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said Callixte Kalimanzira, a close friend to the president and prime minister during the killing spree, was guilty of genocide and complicity to commit genocide.
“Yes, it is 30 years,” Bocar Sy, ICTR head of public affairs and information, told by phone from Arusha in north Tanzania where the court sits.
Hutu militias slaughtered 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in the 100-day massacre that shook the African continent and the global arena.
Fifteen years later, there are still accusations over the global community’s incapacity to prevent or stop the genocide, and over who exactly was to blame.
In its 2005 condemnation, the ICTR accused Kalimanzira of encouraging thousands of Tutsi civilians to take refuge at Kabuye Hill in Ndora commune by promising them food and protection, only for militias then to take their lives in his presence.
He was also charged of seeking military and police reinforcements for the massacre.
Kalimanzira, 54, was arrested in 2005 and entered a not guilty plea. His sentencing increases the number of ICTR’s judgments delivered to 38. Six of these were exonerations.
The court had time until the end of last year to finish all trials, and until 2010 to hear all appeals before winding up. However cases have spilled over and the ICTR says it is working hard to finish hearing evidence in all trials by the end of 2009.
