A Belgian court sentenced a former Rwandan army major to 20 years in prison on Thursday for the murder of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and an undetermined number of Rwandan civilians at the start of the 1994 genocide.
Bernard Ntuyahaga was earlier acquitted on two other charges of involvement in the murder of then Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and killing civilians in the Butare district. The public prosecutor had asked for a life sentence for the accused's role in the genocide, in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in Rwanda.
"He remains a Hutu extremist and will probably remain it for the rest of his life," prosecutor Philippe Mere said, adding Ntuyahaga, 55, had expressed no remorse. But the jury decided on a more lenient penalty, which presiding judge Karine Gerard said left the door open for reconciliation among Rwandans. "This sentence is not a cause for despair," she told Ntuyahaga, who remained silent.
The Belgian UN soldiers were killed a day after the Rwandan president's plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, triggering the genocide by Hutu-led government forces and ethnic militias.
Prosecutors said Ntuyahaga took the peacekeepers from the residence of the prime minister, whom they were trying to protect, and handed them over to fellow soldiers at a military camp in the capital Kigali, where they were beaten to death, shot or slain with machetes.
The defence said Ntuyahaga was a political scapegoat, who had been passing the prime minister's residence by chance and had given the Belgians a ride at their request. Attorney Luc De Temmerman told Belga news agency his client would probably not appeal in light of the sentence.
Convicted criminals can ask for a conditional release after serving a third of their term. This means Ntuyahaga may only spend a few years in jail if judges take part of his detention in Tanzania and Belgium between 1998 and now into account.
The killing of the peacekeepers triggered the pullout of UN forces, opening the way for the genocide to spread. "If Belgian troops had stayed (in Rwanda) we could have saved hundreds of thousands of people," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told the court in his testimony in May.
Rwandans welcomed the Belgian court's verdict. "The conviction was a right decision taken by the court," Martin Ngoga, Rwanda's chief prosecutor told Reuters. "We had earlier wanted him to be extradited and face trial in Rwanda but now that he has received a conviction, it's good news for us."
Theodore Simburudali, president of Ibuka, an umbrella body that groups genocide survivors, said: "The truth has come out, which we have always said. Those top military officials killed many of our people - he deserves a big sentence." Two Catholic nuns, a university professor and a businessman were sentenced in 2001 to between 12 and 20 years in jail for aiding the mass murders.
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