Ex-FAR chief Gen. Bizimungu loses appeal in Genocide case

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has upheld the 30-year sentence for one of the primary architects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The Arusha-based court found Gen. Augustin Bizimungu, the chief of staff of the former Rwandan Army (FAR) had complete control over the men he commanded in 1994. He is among the most senior figures to be tried by the Tanzania-based tribunal for the Genocide in which more than a million people were slaughtered. In May 2011, the court found Bizimungu guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, but he appealed the sentence, claiming that he had “urged military discipline and respect for the dignity of human life.” But the court ruled that Bizimungu had complete control over the men he commanded, men who were involved in the massacres that started in the night of April 6, 1994. Rwanda’s Prosecutor-General Richard Muhumuza welcomed the ruling. “This is definitely good news to us. It is an important step to convict an army general whose army committed genocide against the people it was supposed to protect,” he said. Ibuka president Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu said the verdict is okay as long as he was proven guilty for all the crimes he is accused of. A survivor’s pain However, Olivier Byiringiro, 28, a Genocide survivor who is struggling through life along with his three siblings, is not pleased with the way the tribunal has handled Genocide trials. “It is sad to see that nearly all such influential Interahamwe elements tried by that tribunal get lenient sentences. You wonder whether they deliver such sentences with an understanding of the brutality of the crime of the genocide committed against the Tutsi and the consequences this has had on us survivors,” Byiringiro said. Bizimungu was born in the former Byumba prefecture in August 1952. In 1994, he held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following the death of army chief of staff Déogratias Nsabimana, he was promoted to Major-General and appointed as army chief on April 6. Upon fleeing the country following the RPF victory, it is alleged that he said “the RPF will rule over a desert.” On April 12, 2002, ICTR issued an arrest warrant for Bizimungu, who was then working with the Angolan rebel movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).