Former Rwandan prosecutor found guilty of genocide by UN tribunal

A former prosecutor was sentenced to life in prison today after being found guilty of genocide, extermination and murder by the United Nations war crimes tribunal set up in the wake of the 1994 killing spree in Rwanda.

The trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found that Simeon Nchamihigo, former deputy prosecutor in Cyangugu Prefecture, instructed the Hutu-dominated rebel group known as the Interahamwe to seek out and kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus with the intent to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group and accomplices of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front.

The chamber also found that Mr. Nchamihigo took part in attacks on refugee places, with some of the massacres planned during meetings of the prefecture Security Council which he attended.

In sentencing him, the ICTR – based in Arusha, Tanzania – took into consideration that he had committed such crimes while serving as a Rwandan prosecutor.

The chamber noted that Mr. Nchamihigo, “as a deputy prosecutor of Cyangugu Prefecture, was in a position of public trust, yet he exhibited zeal in the perpetration of these serious crimes,” according to a press release issued by the Tribunal.

More than 800,000 people were massacred, mostly by machete, for being ethnic Tutsis or Hutu moderates during a period of less than 100 days starting in April 1994.

The defendant pleaded not guilty to all four counts against him when he first appeared before the ICTR in 2001.