Key Rwandan genocide suspect abstains from guilty plea

Apr 05, 2016

The 53-year-old fugitive was arrested in December in the Democratic Republic of Congo and extradited to his homeland to face justice.

KIGALI - Top level Rwandan genocide suspect Ladislas Ntaganzwa appeared in a Kigali court on Monday but refrained from answering whether he was guilty of the charges including inciting massacres and mass rapes.

The 53-year-old fugitive was arrested in December in the Democratic Republic of Congo and extradited to his homeland to face justice.

Until his arrest, the former mayor was one of nine genocide suspects still being actively sought by an international tribunal for involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide which claimed the lives of 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis.

Ntaganzwa had a $5 million (4.6 million euro) US bounty on his head and has been indicted by a UN-backed court for genocide and crimes against humanity.

He is accused of organising "the massacre of thousands of Tutsis at various locations," the UN-backed Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) said when he was arrested.

"He was also alleged to have orchestrated the rape and sexual violence committed against many women," it said.

Ntaganzwa said he was "abstaining" when asked by the judge if he was guilty of genocide, direct and public incitement to genocide, massacres, an extermination campaign and orchestrating mass rapes.

His lawyer Laurent Bugabo told AFP his client had not had enough time to examine his dossier, sent in 2012 to Rwandan authorities by the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania.

No date was given for the start of the trial.

According to a 44-page ICTR indictment, Ntaganzwa helped to establish, train and arm the local Interahamwe militia, the ethnic Hutu youth wing of the political party he ran in the Nyakizu area, "with the intent to exterminate the Tutsi population and eliminate its 'accomplices'."

It also accuses Ntaganzwa of personally leading a series of massacres of Tutsi civilians, including an attack on a church where thousands had taken shelter.

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