On Thursday, a Rwandan court sentenced a former politician found guilty of orchestrating the killing of thousands of people during the 1994 genocide, Africa-News reports.
Head of the commune of Nyakizu in southern Rwanda, Ladislas Ntaganzwa was accused in 1996 by the Arusha, a Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for the country Rwanda on charges of direct and public incitement to commit genocide and also found guilty in murder and rape of some citizens.
The closure of the tribunal five years ago was then replaced by a successor body, International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, with her offices in Arusha and the Hague, Netherlands.
Report has it that about 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed during the genocide attack.
The tribunal’s case placed Ntaganzwa guilty of plotting to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsi population and personally ordering the massacre of more than 200,000 Tutsi civilians in April 1994, which passed the case to a Rwandan government court.
“Ladislas Ntaganzwa was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment over genocide crimes committed during the genocide against Tutsi in 1994,” the court spokesman, Harrison Mutabazi, said.
Ntaganzwa’s lawyer, Alexis Musonera said he planned to appeal the ruling.
In his statement he said “We plan to appeal because evidence in the hearing was based on witnesses’ testimony but that was not enough as some witnesses were contradicting themselves. We are not happy about this lengthy life jail term,” Africa-News reports.
Ntaganzwa was arrested in December 2015 in Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda took him into custody in March 2016.
Meanwhile it’s was earlier reported that The United States had offered up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest.
Félicien Kabuga, the top-most fugitive from the genocide, was arrested in France last week.
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals later finalized that former defence minister Augustin Bizimana with another key suspect, had passed away. Africa-News reports.