The defendant, in his forties, hails from Nyanza (Southern Rwanda). He was convicted for the rape of a young Tutsi woman he confined on the pretext of protecting her from the killers.
In 2007, the businessman was already tried and sentenced to 18 years in prison for "complicity in the murders of several people" in 1994.
The Gacaca courts, adapted from a form of Rwandan traditional justice, are tasked with trying suspected perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide which left some 800,000 people dead, according to the UN. These village courts, whose judges are elected from the community, can hand down sentences up to life imprisonment, which is now the maximum penalty in Rwanda. They have so far tried more than a million people.
SRE-ER/GF
© Hirondelle News Agency