ICTR: Butare Trial finally ends Prosecution seeks life for all accused

ICTR prosecutors yesterday requested the Tribunal to hand life sentences to six Genocide suspects, including Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former Minister for Family and Women Affairs. Nyiramasuhuko is the first woman to be charged with Genocide by UN court. The so-called “Butare Trial” which started in 2001, is one of the longest running trials in the history of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The ICTR is an ad-hoc tribunal established by the UN Security Council to try masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The suspects in the Butare Trial, led by Nyiramasuhuko are accused of spearheading massacres in the former Butare Prefecture (Southern Province). Others include her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, former Governors Sylvain Nsabimana and Alphonse Nteziryayo, Joseph Kanyabashi and Elie Ndayambaje, former Mayors of Ngoma and Muganza communes respectively. “The prosecutor submits that he has proven beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the accused on all the counts of which they stand charged before you. Therefore, the prosecutor requests that all of them are sentenced to the maximum penalty that is imprisonment for the remainder of their lives,” Holo Makwaia, said in the closing arguments. All the six accused sat at the defence side of the court and listened attentively as Makwaia argued that all of them are charged with crimes of the most serious nature involving the intentional and systematic killing of; “thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians in the Butare prefecture.” At the beginning of the closing arguments yesterday, Makwaia stated that Nyiramasuhuko was in charge of a campaign which targeted the killing of Tutsis. “Her son Ntahobali was not very far from following his mother’s footsteps as he was a killer and a rapist.’’ Another Prosecutor, Madeleine Schwarz, said Nyiramasuhuko gave orders to her son, and Interahamwe militia to abduct, rape and finally kill Tutsi girls and women. The Prosecution added that those on trial were people who supported the call by the then Interim President - Theodore Sindikubwabo to exterminate ethnic Tutsi in the Southern Province. In a similar demonstration of how the gruesome massacres unfolded in the Southern Province in 1994, the Prosecution on Monday also requested for a life sentence for Callixte Kalimanzira, former Cabinet Director in the Rwandan Interior Ministry, for allegedly having personally participated in killings in the Province. Ends

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ICTR: Butare Trial finally ends Prosecution seeks life for all accused