The National Commission for the Fight against the Genocide (CNLG) seeks to have Muhoza Genocide Memorial in Musanze town set up on the grounds of the former ‘Cour d’Appel de Ruhengeri (Ruhengeri Court of Appeal).

At these premises, more than 300 Tutsi were killed during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, according to Jean Damascene Bizimana, Executive Secretary of CNLG.

Bizimana made the revelation this week, as CNLG appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Rights to respond to queries that were identified in the former’s 2018/2019 activity report.

"The [court] building was the killing site of between 300 and 400 Tutsi who were moved from different communes which used to make up Ruhengeri Prefecture,” he said.

"The victims who included women, children and men were packed in the courtroom and grenades thrown in and shot,” he said.

"Later, after realising that some of them were wounded, they [genocide perpetrators] broke into the courtroom and hacked those that were found still alive”.

Bizimana said that these victims were lured there by leaders of the former Ruhengeri Prefecture as part of the strategy to gather Tutsi with intent to easily kill them.

Most of them were from Busengo sub-prefecture (in the current Gakenke District) which was then led by Dismas Nzanana.

"Nzanana brought them in government-owned buses on April 15, 1994. Then, Interahamwe militiamen and soldiers were given instructions to kill them,” he said adding that Nzanana is in Nyanza Prison where he is serving a life sentence.

So far, there is a monument showing that people were killed there, and it bears some of the names which were able to be identified, he noted.

"We realised that because it is at the court where people were killed is where the memorial should be constructed,” he said.