Genocide accused: Three remanded in custody
Three men accused of playing leading roles in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 were today remanded in custody by a British court.
Vincent Bajinya – who changed his name to Vincent Brown when he became a British citizen, Charles Munyaneza and Celestin Ugirashebuja were arrested along with a fourth man last night in a series of co-ordinated swoops in London, Manchester, Essex and Bedfordshire.
The three appeared before City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London today, where they were remanded in custody to reappear on January 26.
The fourth man, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, who was arrested in Manchester, is expected to appear before the same court later today.
The court heard that the arrests came after a special agreement was signed between Britain and Rwanda allowing them to be extradited.
The court was told that under the newly-signed Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda - which has not been previously publicised in order not to alert the four genocide suspects - the men would not be given the death penalty were they to be convicted.
In an unusual hearing for a British magistrates court, the Rwandan government’s lawyer Gemma Lindfield set out the origins of the 1994 slaughter in which up to one million Tutsis were massacred.
The court was told of a series of incidents dating back to the 1930s, when Rwanda was under Belgian rule, which served to intensify divisions between the two groups.
The court heard that by 1994, when the then president Juvenal Habyarimana died in a plane crash, Hutu militias had been set up across Rwanda with specific plans drawn up to systematically kill their Tutsi neighbours.
Miss Lindfield told the court that during the blood letting and mass murder which followed the president’s death both Munyaneza, 48, from Bedford and Ugirashebuja, 53, from Walton on the Naze, Essex, had been local Bourgmestres or mayors with sweeping powers in their area.
Their role, she said had been to oversee and facilitate the killing of Tutsis while Bajinya, 45, of Islington, north London, had been a militia co-ordinator in the capital Kigali.
The court was told that Munyaneza, who had been working as a cleaner in Bedford, had allegedly attended a number of meetings in which the killing of Tutsis had been planned, as well as making speeches to the population during the genocide urging them to kill Tutsis and portraying them as a threat to Hutus.
Miss Lindfield told the court that Munyaneza had also allegedly urged Tutsis to flee to safety in public buildings amid the massacres, only for them to find that the Hutu militias were lying in wait.
She continued: “He also attended meetings at which the number of Tutsis killed in that district were recorded.
“It is estimated that there were tens of thousands of Tutsis killed in his district and as bourgmestere he was very much responsible for the planning of the killings.”
She told the court that Ugirashebuja had held a similar position of power in the commune of Kigoma, close to Kigali, where militias also roamed murdering Tutsis and raping women.
She said: “His role was to make sure that the Tutsis were being killed and to monitor how many were being killed.
“He also organised road blocks in the commune to prevent the escape of Tutsis and again is responsible for many thousands of Tutsi lives.”
She continued that Bajinya, a qualified doctor who until recently was working for a British-based charity, had co-ordinated militias in Kigali itself.
She told the court that he had organised roadblocks and had helped arm militias with machetes which were used to hack Tutsis to death.
She said that he had personally helped to man roadblocks and had led militiamen on searches of houses to seek out Tutsis and kill them in their homes while those who escaped were murdered at the roadblocks.
She said that he too had also attended meetings in which the progress of the genocide was monitored.
Objecting to bail, she told the court: “All three men are heavily involved in the implementation of the genocide in 1994.”
