Former Rwandan minister jailed for 35 years for genocide

By FUMBUKA NG’WANAKILALA
Published on 21/12/2012 00:00

RWANDAN former minister Augustin Ngirabatware has been sentenced to 35 years in jail by a UN war crimes tribunal for involvement in the country’s 1994 genocide.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, said Ngirabatware had instigated, planned, aided and abetted attacks on, and the killings of, Tutsis.

Ethnic Hutu militia and soldiers butchered 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in just 100 days between April and June 1994.

Ngirabatware, 55, was arrested in Germany in 2007.

“The trial chamber convicted Ngirabatware of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and rape as a crime against humanity,” the ICTR said.

He is a son-in-law of Felicien Kabuga, Rwanda’s most-wanted man. The United States has put a $5 million (£3m) bounty on Kabuga’s head, under a programme to bring to justice those most responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.