RWANDA: Belgian court rejects appeals of genocide convicts

RWANDA: Belgian court rejects appeals of genocide convicts

BRUSSELS, 10 January (IRIN) - Belgian's final court of appeal, the Cour de
Cassation, rejected on Wednesday the appeals for a retrial by a Rwandan
businessman and two Rwandan nuns sentenced to prison in Brussels on 8 June
2001 for war crimes committed during the 1994 genocide.

Lawyers for convicts had appealed claiming irregularities in the original
trial. However, the appeal court confirmed the sentence of 20 years
imprisonment for Alphonse Higaniro, 52, a former minister and director of
a match factory; 15 years for Consolata Mukangango, 42, also known as
Sister Gertrude; 12 years for Julienne Mukabutera, 36, known as Sister
Maria Kizito. Both nuns are from the Benedictine convent in Sovu, Butare
Prefecture, Rwanda.

The fourth convicted, Vincent Ntezimana, 39, is a former professor at
Butare University. He was given a 12-year sentence but did not appeal.

The trial of the "Butare Four" was described as "historic", because it was
the first under a 1993 law in which defendants were judged in Belgium
courts for war crimes and human rights violations committed by foreigners
outside Belgium. All four originate from Butare in southern Rwanda, where
their crimes were committed, and have been living in Belgium since the
1994 genocide, in which at least 900,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were
slaughtered.

"It's a fundamental judgement that makes the trial historic," one of the
lawyers of the victims said. "We are now waiting for other trials in
Belgium and elsewhere, for which investigations are continuing."

Currently, a Belgian investigative magistrate, Damien Vandermeersch, is in
Rwanda in connection with the killings of four Belgians in 1994. Three of
the dead were aid workers - Olivier Dulieu, Christine Andre and Antoine
Godfriaux - slain in Rambura (about 150 km from Kigali) on 7 April 1994.
Their families suspect that they were killed because they had been
informed about funds embezzled from the Belgian foreign aid office.

Vandermeersch, accompanied by a deputy prosecutor and two police
detectives, will also seek information on the deaths of another Belgian
and two Rwandans in Kigali on the same date, in response to complaints
made by Belgian citizens.[ENDS]

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