Rwanda’s High Court on Thursday, May 28th sentenced a former mayor to life in prison for his role in the country’s 1994 genocide, which resulted in the deaths of 800,000 people in the East African country.
Ladislas Ntaganzwa, was one of the top fugitive suspects, accused of playing a key role in the massacre. He was arrested in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo in 2015 before he was brought back to Rwanda in 2016 where he has been on trial.
Ntaganzwa, who had a $5-million (4.6-million-euro) US bounty on his head was accused of organising “the massacre of thousands of Tutsis at various locations,” the UN-backed Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) said when he was arrested.
“He was also alleged to have orchestrated the rape and sexual violence committed against many women,” it said.
A statement from Rwanda’s prosecution authority said the court “convicted him for genocide, extermination as a crime against humanity and rape as a crime against humanity and sentenced him to life imprisonment.”
Ntaganzwa was, however, “not found guilty of murder as a crime against humanity and direct and public incitement to commit genocide,” the prosecution authority said.