The Vice-President and Defence Minister of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has reaffirmed that the authorities intend to execute those found responsible for the ethnic genocide of 1994.

His intervention follows comments by the Deputy-Justice Minister Gerard Gahima, who suggested that alternative punishment might be found. He said it would be impractical to execute all those who participated in the atrocities.

Kigali prison in Gisenyi prefecture

Rwanda faces a judicial crisis. There are more than 100,000 prisoners currently awaiting trial for their role in the mass slaughter in which more than a million people died.

Legal system remains in crisis

It would take around 300 years to process each case at the current rate of progress. But survivors of the genocide are terrified by the alternative. For many, the murders of summer 1994 are still a vivid memory.

They fear that without appropriate state punishment, freed prisoners and some rebel Hutu factions will take the law into their own hands.

The country's judiciary was decimated three years ago during the civil war and genocide. Judges were either killed or fled abroad and Rwanda is still attempting to rebuild a judicial system.

Trying all the prisoners would bring political dilemmas for the government.

Inmates, mostly Hutus, and former rebels do not know when they will come to trial

Executing large numbers of Hutus would contribute little to their task of national reconciliation.

Mr Kagame, though, is adamant that the courts must have the death sentence available to them as a sentencing option.

His remarks echo those of the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, who said last week that life imprisonment was not enough and those who planned the 1994 massacres should be hanged.

However, many of those implicated in the genocide are either living abroad or preparing to stand trial before an international tribunal in Tanzania which will not impose any death penalties.
 

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