The Court of Appeal will, on Monday, January 17 start hearing an appeal case filed by both the prosecution and convicts of last year’s case involving fighters and leaders of FLN, a terrorist group and its political outfit, MRCD. In the case, the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) is protesting the penalties given to the convicts, saying they are too lenient in comparison to the crimes, among other things. In a similar way, 14 of the convicted persons claim the penalties they were given are too heavy, considering some mitigating factors, for example, their collaboration with the court during the trial process. The 14 are part of the 21 suspects who were in September last year convicted by the High Court Chamber for International and Cross-border Crimes and handed varying penalties for having played a role in the terror attacks conducted by the FLN in South Western Rwanda from June 2018 to October 2019. At least nine people were killed, several others injured, property looted or destroyed during the attacks. The convicts received penalties ranging from 25 to 3 years in jail, in addition being ordered to pay hundreds of millions of francs as compensation to the victims of the terror activities. Here, Paul Rusesabagina, the political head of the FLN was sentenced to 25 years in prison, while Callixte Nsabimana Alias Sankara, a former FLN spokesperson, Marc Nizeyimana, a former commander among a few others got 20 years in jail. Other convicts got 10, 5 and 3 years in prison. The New Times was not able to establish the names of the persons who decided to appeal, but we understand that Rusesabagina is not among them. According to Harrison Mutabazi, the Spokesperson for the Judiciary, others who appealed are civil parties, who say the damages awarded to them were not commensurate to the losses suffered. Why prosecution appealed Following the verdict in September, Faustin Nkusi, the Spokesperson of NPPA, welcomed the fact that none of the defendants was acquitted but decried the lenient sentences handed to some convicts. “For those for whom we had requested a life sentence, they got twenty-five years, others whom we had sought twenty years, they were given five,” he told the media at that time. Nkusi also reiterated that some charges were dropped, a decision that his institution was unhappy with. “There are suspects who had seven, nine or even fourteen charges but were only found guilty on one,” he noted.
