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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

RWANDA: Released genocide suspects begin re-education

NAIROBI, 31 January 2003 (IRIN) - Some 19,000 genocide prisoners granted provisional release by President Paul Kagame began two months of re-education on Friday at solidarity camps throughout the country's 11 provinces and the City of Kigali.

Upon completing the training, the prisoners are expected to return to their local communities, but will eventually face trial under the 'Gacaca' justice system launched in 2002. Gacaca is modelled on a traditional system where the community tries suspects in open sessions in villages.

Kagame issued the decree on 1 January, granting provisional release to thousands of prisoners in an effort to decongest prisons, which hold hundreds of thousands of detainees suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide.

About 19,276 genocide suspects were released on Tuesday. Most of them had confessed and been sentenced before the implementation of Gacaca. Another 21,130 prisoners, mostly those over 70 years old and the sick, were released to go home on 10 January.

The director of administration at the Ministry of Justice, Hannington Tayebwa, told IRIN on Wednesday that the prisoners would be trained in several trades aimed at reintegrating them into the community. The training would include the history of the genocide, development studies, HIV and AIDS awareness and trauma counselling, Tayebwa said.

He said every prefecture had a solidarity camp, and that a few, such as Gitarama and Butare, had more than one.

Rwanda launched Gacaca in a bid to expedite the genocide trials and decongest the prisons, which have been home to hundreds of thousands of prisoners since the overthrow of the former government in 1994.

About 800,000 people were killed in the April-July 1994 genocide.

Themes: (IRIN) Human Rights

[ENDS]

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