A UN court on Tuesday found a former Rwandan colonel guilty of genocide and sentenced him to 25 years in jail, a spokesman for the tribunal said.
Aloys Simba, 67, was convicted of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity. Simba, who was also an influential member of parliament at the time of the Rwandan genocide, had been behind bars since he was captured in Senegal in late 2001.
"He was sentenced for 25 years and got four years credited to him," Bocar Sy, a spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said from the town of Arusha.
Prosecutors told the court that he was a close friend of assassinated Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana whose death triggered a three-month long massacre that left about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead in 1994.