MIKA KILLED MY CHILDREN, CUT OFF MY ARM AND LEFT ME FOR DEAD-WITNESS

Arusha, April 20th, (FH)- A witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Tuesday alleged that the former councillor of Gishyita sector (Gishyita commune) in Kibuye province (Western Rwanda) Mika Muhimana, had chopped off her left arm and killed her three children. The 14th prosecution witness code-named BC to protect her identity, survived the genocide in Bisesero hills in Kibuye.

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She said the incident happened in mid April 1994. "They had been attacking us the whole day. In the afternoon, they overcame our husbands who had been resisting them and poured upon us in big numbers". BC alleged that her children and she were discovered by Mika who started hacking her oldest child. "I covered my face in fright when I saw the blood of my child. That is when Mika turned on me", she explained. The witness continued that she gained conscious hours later to find that all her children were dead and that she had lost her left arm. "Mika left me for dead. God refused to hand me over to him", she said. Though Mika Muhimana is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity, the majority of the 22 witnesses to be called by the prosecution will testify on rapes allegedly committed by the accused during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The indictment alleges that Mika Muhimana personally raped many Tutsi women in Gishyita and the surrounding areas and that on many occasions, he killed or ordered to kill, Tutsi women and girls after having raped and publicly humiliating them. The trial continues in Trial Chamber Three of the ICTR composed of Judge Khalida Rashid Khan from Pakistan (presiding) who is assisted by Judge Lee Gaciuga Muthoga of Kenya and Judge Emile Francis Short from Ghana. KN/JA/GF/FH (MH''0420e)