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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

RWANDA: ICTR appeals court hands down first war crimes conviction

ARUSHA, 27 May 2003 (IRIN) - The appeals court of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Monday upheld a sentence of life imprisonment against George Rutaganda, a key player in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. At the same time, the court handed down its first conviction for war crimes, the ICTR said.

Rutaganda, 45, was at the time of the massacres a vice-president of the Hutu militia group, the "Interahamwe", that largely carried out the killings of some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. He was sentenced by the ICTR on 6 December 1999 after he was found guilty on three counts - genocide, extermination as a crime against humanity and murder as a crime against humanity.

According to an ICTR statement, the appeals court upheld the first two convictions but acquitted Rutaganda of murder as a crime against humanity after finding "inconsistencies" in witnesses' evidence.

However, it entered two new convictions for murder as a violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions after ruling that the trial chamber had wrongly acquitted Rutaganda of war crimes relating to the killing of Tutsi refugees at a school. The ICTR said the two convictions represented the first time the tribunal had convicted a defendant of a war crime.

Rutaganda's lawyer had filed the appeal, accusing the trial chamber of being partial in delivering its judgement and of committing 10 general errors of law which undermined the fairness of the trial. The appeals court said it found no evidence of factual or legal errors to back the accusation.

"The [appeals] chamber upholds the decision taken by the trial chamber. Rutaganda should remain in detention in the custody of the tribunal," Theodor Meron, the presiding judge of the appeals court, said on announcing the judgement at the ICTR in Arusha, northern Tanzania.

Rutaganda, a former businessman, was born in Masango commune of Gitarama province. He was arrested on 10 October 1995 in Zambia and was transferred to the ICTR on 30 May 1996.

The full ICTR statement is available at: www.ictr.org

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Human Rights

[ENDS]

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