Ex-minister loses genocide appeal

Some 800,000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994

A former Rwandan information minister has lost his appeal against a life sentence for his role in the genocide.

Eliezer Niyitegeka was originally accused of taking part in two horrific acts during the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Prosecutors said he had ordered the beheading and castration of a Tutsi businessman and impaled a woman on a wooden stake and left her for two days.

The judge said that Niyitegeka would spend the rest of his life in prison.

There is no possibility of parole of time off for good behaviour, reports the AP news agency.

He had appealed on 53 grounds but they were all rejected by judge Theodor Meron.

Handing down the original 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."

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

Eight years after being set up, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, has convicted 22 people of genocide - six of whom are serving their sentences in Mali.

Eleven others have appealed.