Genocide verdict for ex-minister

Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed with machetes and spears

Former Rwandan Information Minister Eliezer Niyitegeka has been sentenced to serve the rest of his life in prison.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha handed down the sentence for his part in the massacre of Tutsi civilians in the hills of western Rwanda.

An estimated 800,000 people were killed during the 100-day genocide in 1994.

The tribunal heard that Niyitegeka ordered the decapitation and castration of a well-known Tutsi businessman.

He also had the body of a Tutsi woman impaled on a wooden stake through her vagina and left to hang for days.

In a separate trial, the UN court also sentenced former mayor Laurent Semanza to 25 years in jail for his part in the genocide.

Meanwhile, nearly 800 genocide suspects freed from Rwandan prisons earlier this year have been rearrested, says the justice ministry.

Up to 40,000 minor suspects were released after confessing to their crimes but 787 have since been accused of committing new crimes during the genocide and are again in prison.

Inciting

Since it was set up in 1994 to try the architects of the killings, the international tribunal has now managed to convict 12 people and acquit one.

Niyitegeka's trial was one of the shortest of the tribunal's cases so far, taking just nine months.

Niyitegeka was arrested in Kenya in February 1999, and his trial began in June last year.

Pronouncing the sentence, South African judge Navanethem Pillay said: "Mr Niyitegeka organised the genocide, incited people to commit it and himself massacred Tutsis in the hills of Bisesero."

The prosecution said during the trial that the accused was a minister at the top of the government hierarchy and a journalist.

"As a minister, he was committed to upholding the constitution but instead he violated it" by taking part in the genocide, the prosecution said.