According to Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Justice, Pascal Ruganintwari, “there are no cases left before Gacaca courts”, but the official closure had to be delayed again because of some backlog in documents translation. The closure of Gacaca courts was first announced in 2007 but has been postponed several times due to what officials call complexity of certain cases and the discovery of new facts.
Gacaca trials began in 2005 in 106 pilot jurisdictions and were then extended to the rest of the country. They have now judged some 1.5 million people, handind down 1.9 million judgments, according to the Rwandan government.
Gacaca courts have the competence to try all genocide suspects except top planners at national and prefectural level. They can impose sentences of up to life imprisonment which is now the maximum sentence in Rwanda.
Gacaca judges are volunteers and are not professional lawyers but rather people elected by their communities on the basis of integrity. Some have, however, themselves been accused of genocide, subsequently tried and convicted or acquitted. Some have also been caught at corruption
SRE-ER/GF
© Hirondelle News Agency