Nzabirinda ,51, pleaded guilty and was convicted for murder in February 23,2007. He was sentenced to seven years with credit of six years that he had already spent in detention awaiting his trial.
The former youth leader, was released at around 10.30 and was met by his jubilant French defence counsel, François Roux, and friends at the main gate of the UNDF.
"I feel very happy because I am a free man now," Nzabirinda alias Biroto told Hirondelle few minutes after his release.
He said in the dentention he enjoyed cooperation from his inmates and prison admninistration.
Asked where he would go next, he said arrangements were in the offing between him and his lawyer to ask the Belgium authorities to host him as his family lives there.
Nzabirinda was arrested in 2001 in Brussels, Belgium, after it was disclosed that he worked as an investigator for ICTR defence team.
After having declined the allegations charged against him, he ended up pleading guilty in December 2006, conceding having taken part, during the genocide, in organization meetings of massacres and acting as an "approving spectator" during two murders committed in his vicinity.
Nzabirinda is the third ICTR convict to finish serving his sentence in Arusha.
NI/SC/GF
© Hirondelle News Agency
