According to this private agency, of the six sentenced, four, including Doctor Séraphin Bararengana, brother of Juvénal Habyarimana, were tried in absentia.
Doctor Bararengana is reported to be exiled in a West African country.
Only Doctor Jean Népomuscène Nsengiyumva, originating from Gisenyi (northern Rwanda) and Pascal Habarugira, originating from Cyangugu (south-western Rwanda) were present at the time of their judgment, specified the ARI.
At the end of this two month trial before the gacaca court of Ngoma, in the district of Huye, the defendants were found guilty of having refused to look after Tutsis that were gravely ill and to have deliberately starved them in 1994, accusing them of being accomplices of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), currently in power, the ARI continues.
According to the judgment, they also organized with the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of Rwanda (UNR) meetings during which they invited people to hunt and kill Tutsis.
This court is also trying ten other doctors and male nurses living in Rwanda or at large abroad, specified, under the cover of anonymity, a Rwandan source joined by telephone in Kigali.
Inspired by the traditional Rwandan village assemblies when "wise men" would settled disagreements, the gacaca courts are charged with trying the majority of the persons accused of being involved in the 1994 genocide; which resulted, according to Kigali, in nearly a million killed, primarily Tutsis.
ER/PB/MM
© Hirondelle News Agency