According to a Human Rights' activist who asked to remain unidentified, they are charged for inciting to exterminate Tutsi professors and students at the National University of Rwanda (UNR), where they were studying at the time. Both defendants plead not guilty.
Hearings will resume on Tuesday.
Several professors and students from UNR have already been sentenced by Gacaca courts for their role in the genocide, some of them in absentia.
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 are expected to wind down their proceedings by December.
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© Hirondelle News Agency