Posted on 12/13/2005 5:07:25 PM PST by NormsRevenge
ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) - A UN-backed tribunal convicted a former senior Rwandan army officer of playing a major role in the country's 1994 genocide and sentenced him to 25 years in prison, the court said.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found ex-colonel Aloys Simba guilty of genocide and extermination during the 100-day massacres in which some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists, it said.
The former officer and member of parliament had initially faced four counts but was acquitted on charges and conspiracy to commit genocide and murder, the ICTR said in a statement.
Prosecutors had sought a the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for Simba but the court sentenced him to 25 years, noting that he had not directly participated in the incident that led to his indictment, it said.
Simba, 67, was among a group of soldiers who helped Rwanda's late president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, take power in a bloodless 1973 coup and remained very close to the leader until his death.
Habyarimana's April 6, 1994, assassination sparked the massacres of Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in which Simba was accused of playing a leading role, in the southern province of Gikongoro.
Prosecution witnesses, including a former Rwandan soldier, testified that Simba had told colleagues after Habyarimana's death that he had been called out of retirement to "eliminate this filth," referring to Tutsis.
The charges stemmed from an April 21, 1994, massacre in which Hutu militia slaughtered thousands of Tutsi civilians in a 12-hour bloodletting at three locations, including a school where they had sought refuge.
The court found that Simba had supported the "highly coordinated operation" by distributing weapons at two sites and giving "encouragement and approval to the assailants by virtue of his prominent status in Rwandan society," it said.
However, in sentencing Simba to a lighter jail term than what the prosecution had asked, the court said it was "not convinced that he was one of the architects of the massacres."
The court said Simba "did not demonstrate any particular zeal or sadism" and noted that "he did not personally kill anyone and only remained at the sites for a brief period," the statement said.
Simba's lawyer, Sadikou Alao from Benin, had argued the the prosecution failed to prove the charges in the indictment and had produced no evidence to suggest his client had intended to commit any of the crimes of which he was accused.
After the ruling, Alao said his client will appeal the tribunal's decision, noting that presiding judge Erik Mose acknowledged that Simba was not directly involved in the massacre and played no role in its planning.
"We will not criticize the tribunal's ruling," Alao said. "We think the judges did what is legal, but we do not agree with them on the conviction. Our client ought to have been acquitted,"
Simba, who denied all the charges, was arrested in Senegal in 2001 and transferred to ICTR detention facilities in Tanzania's northern town of Arusha the following year.
His trial opened in August 2004 but was suspended several times, at least once due to safety concerns for both prosecution and defense witnesses.
Set up in late 1994 to prosecute the architects and main perpetrators of the genocide, the ICTR has now convicted 24 suspects and acquitted three.
Colonel Aloys Simba, found guilty of genocide and extermination, sits at the UN-backed Rwanda genocide tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, after he was sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Col. Simba was the former head of the civil defence program in the two southern provinces of Butare and Gikongoro during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.(AFP/Kennedy Ndahiro)
Sounds like the Ninth Circuit Court of Rwanda...easy libs.
start writing CHILDRENS BOOKS stooopid!!!
And we murrrrrrdered Poor Tookie AFTER he spent 25 years in prison for prematurely inhuming only four persons. Where's the Jusssstuss? Whaaaahhhhhhhh! /sarc>
How can they even begin to believe they are civilized, let alone act holier than thou toward us, for not executing inhuman demoniacs?
Because, little as it may be, they did something.
We did nothing.
"Never again"
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