24.11.08 - RWANDA/GACACA - A RWANDAN "SURVIVOR" SENTENCED TO 17 YEARS FOR GENOCIDE

Kigali, 24 November 2008 (FH) - A man who presented himself as a genocide survivor, Augustin Rugeruza alias Gasongo, was sentenced Saturday to 17 years in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, at the end of a trial in revision in Kigali.

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Gasongo who had been acquitted in first instance and in appeal was on trial in revision by the gacaca court of the Nyarugenge sector on location in Biryogo, another district of Kigali.

A genocide survivor, according to his own words, Gasongo was found guilty and convicted of "complicity in the murder of Camille Kayitani and the looting of his goods, criminal conspiracy and of installation of road blocks", according to the ruling read in a public hearing by the president of the court, Christine Shamukiga.

According to him and certain Ibuka officials, the main organization of survivors, the genocidaires against who he had testified would had conspired against him, as a reprisal.

Thus, during the hearing of 18 October, Dieudonné Kayitare, an official of the legal department within Ibuka, had been indignant at the testimony under oath of Amri Karekezi, sentenced to life in prison and to total civic degradation, under the terms of art.76 of the gacaca law.

"Gasongo is a Tutsi originally from Kibuye and he was new in the district during the genocide. To put things straight, he simply got mixed in the mass of killers. He must answer about it, today", explained to the Hirondelle Agency, a Tutsi in his seventies who was a neighbour to the defendant at the time of the facts.

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© Hirondelle News Agency