U.N. court jails Rwandan for 25 years for genocide

DAR ES SALAAM — An international court trying suspects of Rwanda's 1994 genocide has sentenced a 75-year-old militia leader to 25 years for his involvement in the killing of up to 5,000 Tutsis, the court said on Wednesday. Yusuf Munyakazi becomes the oldest person ever to be sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
The tribunal convicted the former businessman of involvement in the killing of up the Tutsis who had sought refuge at two churches in Cyangugu prefecture, South-West Rwanda on April 29 and 30, 1994.
"The trial chamber has found that Munyakazi was the leader of these attacks, and that he arrived with two vehicles carrying groups of Interahamwe from outside the Shangi and Mibilizi areas," Judge Florence Rita Array said in her ruling.
Both attacks occurred in Munyakazi's Cyangugu hometown in northern Rwanda.
"The trial Chamber has therefore concluded beyond reasonable doubt that Munyakazi facilitated the transportation of Bugarama Interahamwe to the two crime sites. The Chamber sentences Munyakazi to a single sentence of 25 years imprisonment," the judge said.
Munyakazi was arrested in May 2004 in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo where he lived under a different name as a Muslim cleric.
The Chamber acquitted him of other charges related to attacks at another parish because of insufficient evidence.
In their indictment, prosecutors said Munyakazi personally transported armed militiamen to villages to kill thousands of Tutsis who were hiding inside churches.
Ethnic Hutu militia and soldiers butchered 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in just 100 days between April and June 1994.