Victoire Ingabire started her appeal submissions before the Supreme Court, yesterday, challenging an eight-year jail sentence that was handed to her by the High Court. In October, last year, the High Court sentenced Ingabire to eight years in jail on two counts of Genocide denial and conspiracy and planning to cause State insecurity. She was, however, acquitted of four other charges: spreading genocide ideology, promoting ethnic divisionism and supporting armed groups. Appearing before the Supreme Court, Ingabire said prosecution presented a lot of contradicting evidence before the High Court. “We had asked the court to critically look at these pieces of evidence, but they ignored that. For example, the airticket of one of my co-accused, Jean Marie Vianney Karuta, which the prosecution claims he used to fly to Kinshasa to meet me, is in different name. This is why I pray to this court to critically analyse the evidence and dismiss it,” Ingabire said. Paradox in dismissed charges She added that the fact that the High Court had dismissed most of the charges against her renders the evidence the court based on to sentence her on the other two charges doubtful. While Ingabire appealed the sentence before the Supreme Court, prosecution also lodged its appeal on grounds that the High Court sentence was lenient. In their appeal, on Tuesday, prosecutors prayed to the Supreme Court to hand a 25-year prison sentence to Ingabire on charges related to spreading rumours with an intention to incite the public to rise up against the State and supporting armed groups. Ingabire is expected to proceed with her submission today. Ingabire’s defence team, made of British lawyer Iain Edwards and Gatera Gashabana, was present in court as she made her initial appeal submissions. The head of an unregistered political party FDU-Inkingi was arrested after testimonies from various arrested former insurgents linked her to subversive activities in the country.
