Kanyarukiga judgement set for tomorrow

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) will tomorrow deliver judgement in the trial of Genocide suspect Gaspard Kanyarukiga, a former businessman of the former Commune Kivumu, in what is now the Western Province. According to an ICTR press statement, the judgement will be delivered by the tribunal’s Trial Chamber II comprising Judges Taghrid Hikmet, Presiding, Seon Ki Park and Joseph Masanche. The 65-year old Genocide suspect pleaded not guilty to charges of Genocide, complicity in genocide, as alternative count, conspiracy to commit genocide and extermination as crime against humanity. During the course of his trial, the Prosecution led by trial attorney Holo Makwaia, argued that the maximum penalty of life imprisonment is the only punishment that befits Kanyarukiga for the heinous crimes he is alleged to have committed. “The person sitting here before you is accused of the most egregious and serious charges which resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, which included women and children at Nyange parish.” “When all efforts to exterminate the Tutsis in huge numbers failed, the accused and his co-perpetrators ordered the demolition of the church,” Makwaia said. ‘‘The most appropriate sentence is imprisonment for the remainder of his life,” she submitted early this year, adding, ‘‘Innocent civilians including children and women were killed brutally and in a barbaric manner in the house of God.’’ Born in 1945 in Kivumu commune, Kanyarukiga was arrested in South Africa in 2004 and transferred the same year to the UN detention facility in Arusha. The same killings at Nyange parish led to the life sentence for the former parish priest of the church, Athanase Seromba. Ends