Prefect of Cyangugu (southern Rwanda) during the 1994 genocide, Emmanuel Bagambiki was convicted for rapes and incitement to commit rapes by the first instance court of Rusizi, in his native region, Thursday morning, Radio Rwanda (governmental).
Bagambaki, who had requested for several months to be reunited with his family, arrived in July in Brussels where he joined his wife and children.
The Rwandan government, which had issued an arrest warrant against him, had criticized the ICTR, accusing it of having helped the former prefect enter Belgian.
The authorities in Brussels had been initially, themselves, very reticent to grant him an entry visa.
On 25 February 2004, the ICTR had acquitted Bagambiki of crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, and this judgment had been confirmed in appeal on 8 February 2006.
But Kigali had immediately announced the opening, against the former prefect, of legal procedures for rapes, crimes for which he had not been tried before the United Nations tribunal. The ICTR had answered that, not having territorial sovereignty, it did not have jurisdiction to carry out an unspecified arrest warrant.
ER/PB/MM
© Hirondelle News Agency