Ruling next month in murders of gorilla reserve Britons
A judge today said he would rule on January 9 in the trial of a Rwandan rebel accused of killing four British tourists and their guide in a famed Ugandan gorilla reserve.
Steven Roberts, 27, from Edinburgh; Mark Lindgren, 23, from St Albans; Hertfordshire; Martin Friend, 24, from Orpington, Kent; and Joanne Cotton, 28, from Essex, were among the victims hacked to death with axes and machetes. Two Americans and two New Zealanders also died.
Fiona Morley, a former catering manager from Edinburgh, was among those who escaped and survived by hiding in bushes.
Proceedings concluded today with assessors, who in the Ugandan legal system assist the judge, arguing that prosecutors had failed to prove their case against Jean-Paul Bizimana.
“The assessors are not the judges and you should wait for my final word on January 9,” High Court Judge John Bosco Katutsi said after listening to the assessors call for Bizimana to be freed.
Rwandan rebels hacked and bludgeoned the tourists from the United States, Britain and New Zealand in a remote rain forest near Uganda’s borders with Congo and Rwanda.
The rebels said they were targeting English-speaking people in a bid to weaken US and British support for the Rwandan government.
