Rwandans jailed for priest deaths

A military court in Rwanda has sentenced two army captains to eight years in prison over the murder of 13 Catholic clerics in the 1994 genocide.

The killings were carried out by soldiers from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the ex-rebel mainly Tutsi group which put an end to the genocide.

Many of the murdered clerics were Hutus - among them were three bishops, including the archbishop of Kigali.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 1994 in 100 days.

The killing by Hutu militias came to an end when the RPF under Paul Kagame, now president, took control of the country.

The convicted captains, John Butera and Dieudonne Rukeba, said they had killed the Catholic clerics on the grounds that they were collaborating with mass murderers, the AFP news agency reports.

They pleaded guilty but were given reduced sentences when it was ruled that their crimes were not premeditated and were committed by soldiers under their command.

Two of the captains' military superiors were acquitted.

The military tribunal co-operated in the case with the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which was set up in 1997 to try the most high-profile genocide cases.

The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma reports from Kigali that it is not the first time high-ranking military officers have gone on trial, but the case has drawn attention because it involves the murder of top clerics.

Trying officers who contributed to the RPF victory may be seen as a message to Rwanda's critics that it intends to leave no crime committed during the genocide untried, he says.