The gacaca courts - from the Rwandese word for "lawn" to highlight the public procedure - are not presided over by professional magistrates, but by village dignitaries.
Dubbed Amani (Peace, in kiswahili) Mahoro, the general had filed an appeal at the beginning of 2009.
On Thursday, several prosecution witnesses described "the cruelty" of the defendant against Tutsis, even before April, 1994. According to the judges, Bizimungu was involved, in February 1994, in the massacre of Tutsis in the small town of Nyagatare, where he is jailed and tried. At the time, he was a young officer in the Rwandan Armed Forces (Forces armées rwandaises, FAR).
When the FAR were defeated in July 1994, he flew to Zaire, where he thereafter participated to the creation of the DLFR. When he finally surrendered in July 2005, he was still one of the leaders of the rebel movement .
Incorporated in the new Rwandan Army, he was since then working with the domestic intelligence service.
SRE/ER/GF
