US deports Rwandan pastor

Mr Ntakirutimana stands accused of assisting genocide

A former Rwandan clergyman accused of participating in the 1994 genocide in his country has been deported from the United States.

Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, 75, is the first person arrested on US soil to be turned over to a United Nations tribunal.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, charged him with genocide and crimes against humanity.

He arrived in Arusha by air on Friday escorted by three US marshals and a doctor.

Mr Ntakirutimana, a former Seventh Day Adventist pastor, was arrested in Laredo, Texas, where his son lives, in September 1996.

He moved to Texas legally under a permanent US resident visa. Mr Ntakirutimana worked part-time there in a health food shop.

The path was cleared for Mr Ntakirutimana to be turned over to the tribunal in January when the US Supreme Court rejected his argument that he could not be extradited because no treaty exists between the United States and the tribunal.

The court ruled that a 1996 federal law allowed the extradition in the absence of a treaty.

Refuge

Hutu troops and mobs killed more than 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis, in three months of genocide in 1994.

UN prosecutors allege that Mr Ntakirutimana encouraged a large group of Tutsi men, women and children to seek refuge in a church and hospital and then took part in a daylong gun and machete attack that left hundreds dead.

Mr Ntakirutimana served as pastor of a church at Mugonero, in the Kibuye district of Rwanda.

A separate charge alleges that in a village called Bisesero, he evacuated Hutus from a church-hospital complex and instructed the execution of remaining Tutsis.

One witness reported seeing Mr Ntakirutimana shooting at Tutsis.

If convicted, Mr Ntakirutimana faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.