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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

RWANDA: Government re-arrests 787 genocide suspects

KIGALI, 14 May 2003 (IRIN) - A total of 787 genocide suspects who were recently provisionally released by the Rwandan government have been re-arrested after fresh crimes were reported against them, an official in the Justice Ministry told IRIN on Tuesday.

The head of the ministry's judicial services, Hannington Tayebwa, said those who were re-arrested were among 22,567 suspects who completed a three-month re-integration and rehabilitation programme held in numerous camps across the country.

Tayebwa told IRIN that the 787 were arrested following new accusations made against them by IBUKA, an umbrella organisation for associations of genocide survivors.

In a new report, IBUKA listed some of the suspects, accusing them of "not being open and telling the truth" about the crimes they committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

"IBUKA came up with fresh accusations against some of the released prisoners. We, therefore, had to reprimand them pending investigations into these new allegations," Tayebwa said, adding that the suspects could not be investigated while they remained free.

President Paul Kagame issued a decree in January 2003, provisionally releasing up to 25,000 genocide suspects, mainly the elderly and the sick as well as those who were minors during the April-June 1994 genocide.

Judicial officials also claimed that some of the re-arrested prisoners committed offences during their rehabilitation in the camps. Tayebwa said that some of them were accused of selling illicit drugs such as marijuana. He said that they had received reports that some of them had committed rape.

"They used to sneak out of the camps and commit these crimes," Tayebwa told IRIN. The highest number of those re-arrested was from the western province of Kibuye, where 144 were returned to prisons.

Genocide survivor groups had criticized the provisional release of the suspects, saying that those pardoned could intimidate survivors into silence - jeopardising the planned Gacaca communal courts, due to begin operating shortly.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

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