BBC News Online: World: Africa

Genocide suspect's website denial

UN authorities have been trying without success to shut down the website since discovering a modem in the cell of Hassan Ngeze, a newspaper editor who is due to go on trial on Monday for crimes against humanity.

Mr Ngeze, 39, was the chief editor of Kangura, which ran anti-Tutsi diatribes including the infamous "Hutu Ten Commandments", depicting Tutsis as sub-humans who should be destroyed.

Regulations set down by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) allow Mr Ngeze use of a telephone, fax and computer in his cell in the Tanzanian capital, Arusha.

But authorities had no idea about the site, which contains case details, letters to officials and trial documents, as well as unauthorised pictures taken inside the prison.

He alleges on the site that Rwanda's Tutsi-led government controls the tribunal's judges, from Norway, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Mr Ngeze is due to go on trial with two other journalists, including a director of the notorious Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, which ran broadcasts inciting Hutus to massacre Tutsis.

Mr Ngeze's US lawyer, John Floyd, has requested the dismissal of the case against the journalist on the grounds that his magazines were written only in the local Kinyarwanda language.

Hutu extremists slaughtered an estimated 800,000 people in the genocide, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.