Italian Rwanda convict flown home

The genocide claimed an estimated 800,000 lives

The only European convicted of involvement in the 1994 Rwanda genocide has been flown to Italy to serve out the rest of his 12-year sentence.

Georges Omar Ruggiu, 50, was a presenter with Radio Libre des Mille Collines, which called for the killing of Rwanda's Tutsis.

He was sentenced in 2000 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Tanzania.

He had admitted incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.

Ruggiu has Italian nationality, though he was born in Belgium.

He had been held by the international tribunal, based in Arusha, since 1997.

According to the tribunal officials, he was the eighth accused person to be convicted by the court and the third to plead guilty to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity committed in Rwanda.

An estimated 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed in the genocide.

It began after the death of the Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down.