Rwandan nuns convicted of war crimes
Two Rwandan nuns were today found guilty in a landmark Belgian trial of war crimes during the 1994 genocide in their central African nation.
Sister Gertrude and Sister Maria Kisito were convicted by the jury of most of the counts of murder against them.
Two other defendants, university professor Vincent Ntezimana and factory owner Alphonse Higaniro, were also convicted on a number of counts in a trial which human rights activists hope will become a precedent.
The trial, which lasted almost eight weeks, was the first in which a jury of ordinary citizens had sat in judgment of war crimes committed in another country.
A 1993 Belgian law gives Belgian courts jurisdiction over violations of the Geneva Convention on war crimes, no matter where they were committed.
‘‘This is a big step forward for international justice. It shows that such a trial can be organised, that you can have a fair trial for events that happen on the other side of the world,’’ said Reed Brody, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.
The defendants were not present when the president of the jury read the verdict.
They were scheduled to return to the court room later Friday to hear the judge read the verdict and rule on 12 of the 55 counts in which the jury was unable to reach a clear verdict.
The jury, which deliberated for 11 hours into the early hours of the morning, delivered a not guilty verdict on 55 of the counts to a packed public gallery, which included many Rwandans.
The charges against the two Hutu nuns stemmed from attacks by militia mobs in April and May 1994 on their convent at Sovu in which up to 7,000 Tutsis were estimated to have perished.
The prosecution claimed the two encouraged and collaborated with the killers, even supplying them with petrol to burn a garage where some 500 people were hiding.
Their lawyers claimed witnesses lied and insisted the nuns were innocent bystanders, unable to halt the slaughter.
The two male defendants also denied the charges.
They were accused of being Hutu extremists who virulently opposed proposals to share power with Tutsi rebels and responded by helping plan and carry out the genocide in their southern region.
The four fled to Belgium Rwanda’s former colonial ruler after the rebels took control of the country and put an end to the killings of Tutsis.
