UN tribunal finds former Rwandan investigator guilty of leaking information

A former Rwandan investigator for the United Nations tribunal set up to deal with the mass killings that engulfed the small African nation in 1994 was found guilty today by the same court of leaking protected information.

Léonidas Nshogoza, who worked for the defence during the trial of Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, was given a 10-month sentence by International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania.

Charged with contempt of the Tribunal for repeatedly meeting with and disclosing protected information about two witnesses, Mr. Nshogoza was acquitted of three other counts today.

In its judgment, the trial chamber said it took into account aggravating factors, including his repeated meetings with protected witnesses, his legal background and his position as an investigator in the Kamuhanda defense team.

But it also noted that it had considered mitigating factors, including the family situation of Mr. Nshogoza, who has three teen-aged children.

Mr. Kamuhanda is serving concurrent life sentences after being convicted of genocide and extermination by the ICTR, which found that he had supervised the killings in his native Gikomero commune in the Kigali-Rural prefecture.

The ICTR was set up by the Security Council in the wake of the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates were killed, mainly by machete, during a period of less than 100 days starting in early April 1994.