Muvunyi judgment set for next week

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) sitting in Arusha, Tanzania, will next week pass judgment in the case of a former military officer, Col Tharcisse Muvunyi. This was revealed on Wednesday by the ICTR spokesman, Roland Amoussouga, in an interview he held with an Arusha-based media agency. Muvunyi was first convicted of Genocide in September 2006and sentenced to 25 in prison, but later the court ordered a re-trial over a speech he allegedly made at a public meeting in the commercial centre of Gikore, Nyaruhengeri commune, in the Southern Province in 1994. He had been found guilty of Genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and other inhuman acts. The ICTR appeals Chamber overturned the lower court’s judgment in August 2008 retaining only the count of direct and public incitement to commit genocide, throwing out the other charges on grounds of errors in the indictment. Muvunyi’s re-trial opened last year with the prosecutor presenting six witnesses in five days while the defence fielded seven witnesses. Born in 1953 in Mukarange Commune, Byumba prefecture, the accused was arrested in February 2000 in the United Kingdom and transferred eight months later to the UN detention centre in Arusha. Ends

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Muvunyi judgment set for next week