The umbrella body for Genocide survivors’ associations, IBUKA, has condemned the recent decision to grant an early release of two convicted masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Ferdinand Nahimana and Emmanuel Rukundo were serving their respective prison sentences before the [resident of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Theodor Meron, decided to grant them an early release last week.

Both convicts are incarcerated in Mali where Nahimana, a renowned Genocide ideologue, is serving 30 years, while Rukundo, a Catholic priest, is serving a 23-year jail term.

"The release of key Genocide convicts Ferdinand Nahimana and Emmanuel Rukundo shows how callous and unfair the ICTR has been to Genocide survivors. Survivors had high hopes of this court, many cooperated with it, but we have not yet received the justice we expected,” said Ibuka president Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu in a statement.

The mechanism was set up to take on the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) when the latter wound up its activities last year.He added that judges who release people like Nahimana and Rukundo, knowing very well what they did, are doing so deliberately and with suspicious motives that have nothing to do with justice.

So far, 10 Genocide perpetrators convicted by the ICTR have since been granted early release by Judge Meron.

Ferdinand Nahimana is a former history professor and co-founder of hate-speech broadcaster Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) the extremist radio station that exhorted the public to kill the Tutsi.

First arrested in 1996, Nahimana was found guilty in December 2003, of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement, persecution and extermination. Emmanuel Rukundo, a former military chaplain, was arrested in 2001, before he was convicted of genocide, extermination and murder in February 2009.

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