25.06.08 - ICTR/KALIMANZIRA - SELF-CONFESSED GENOCIDAIRE CLAIMS KALIMANZIRA ENCOURAGED TUTSI KILLING

Arusha, 25 June 2008 (FH) – A self-confessed genocidaire accused Wednesday the former government senior official, Callixte Kalimanzira ,in a trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) of having incited on several occasions the extermination of ethnic Tutsis in 1994 in the sub-prefecture of Gisagara ,southern Rwanda. The protected witness code-named” BCN” for his safety, alleged that Kalimanzira spoke at several public meetings between April and June 1994 to encourage Hutus to kill Tutsis and to destroy their houses.

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“We were executing his instructions”, claimed BCN who testified in Kinyarwanda and translated into French and English, the two official languages of the Tribunal.
The witness also stated that each time the defendant passed a road block known as “Jaguar”, which had been set up in front of the Catholic church of Gisagara, the accused did not miss the chance to encourage the killers.
At one of his passages, Kalimanzira was astonished not to see corpses. “We told him to look closely … two steps away from the road block there was a pit filled with Tutsi bodies,’’ alleged BCN.
Accused of genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, Kalimanzira, a trained agronomist, has pleaded not guilty. Kalimazira was acting Minister of Interior during the April-July 1994 genocide.
His trial began on 5 May and, according to a source at the office of the prosecutor, they are expected to rest their case this week.
Around twenty prosecution witnesses have already been called to the stand in the trial.
ER/MM/SC/GF