Man to face Rwandan genocide charges
A man accused of being one of the chief architects of the Rwandan genocide is to appear before a UN tribunal today in Arusha, Tanzania.
Augustin Bizimungu, the Rwandan army’s former Chief of Staff, was captured a week ago in Angola.
He is accused of conspiring with other senior officers to exterminate Rwanda’s minority Tutsi population.
He was caught just days after the US offered a reward of up to €5m for information leading to the arrest of eight prime genocide suspects, including Bizimungu.
He faces life in jail if convicted, but after today’s initial appearance at the court, it could be months before his trial resumes.
About 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in three months in Rwanda in 1994.
Many of those responsible fled into Congo, triggering the war there which killed an estimated two million people.
Some of the eight are also implicated in the brutal murder of eight Western tourists, including four Britons, who were abducted from a Ugandan campsite near the Congolese border in March 1999.
Martin Friend, 24, from Orpington, Kent, Steven Roberts, 27, from Edinburgh, Mark Lindgren, 23, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, and Joanne Cotton, 28, from Nazeing, Essex, were beaten to death by Hutu rebels on the first day of their holiday.
