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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Rwanda welcomes genocide life sentence for ex-official |
| 2011-04-01 |
| [The Nation (Nairobi)] Rwanda's justice minister welcomed Thursday a life sentence handed to a former senior government official for involvement in mass killings during the 1994 genocide. ... when victims were known to pay their killers to put them away with a bullet rather than beating them to death with shovels... The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sentenced former top-ranking family ministry official Jean-Baptiste Gatete to life on Tuesday. "He got a deserved sentence. Gatete is the symbol of death and destruction in this country. In eastern Rwanda he is known as the Butcher of Murambi," Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told AFP. "He's a beast and he should be kept away from people," the minister said. Gatete was in 1994 working in the family ministry, having earlier served as mayor of Murambi in the east of the country. The tribunal concluded he had retained influence in Murambi and was responsible for the deaths of "hundreds and possibly thousands" of minority Tutsis there, including by having them buried alive in mass graves. The genocide led by ethnic majority Hutus claimed some 800,000 lives. |
| Posted by:Fred |