An international court in Arusha in Tanzania sentenced the former prime minister of Rwanda to life imprisonment for genocide yesterday after describing his crimes during the 1994 slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis as "widespread and atrocious".
Jean Kambanda, the first man convicted under the 1948 Genocide Convention written in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, pleaded guilty in May to six counts of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The court brushed aside a plea from Kambanda's lawyer to impose a sentence of just two years because the former prime minister had co-operated with prosecutors immediately after his arrest in Kenya last year, and has agreed to testify against former members of his cabinet and senior army officers awaiting trial at the international tribunal in Tanzania.
The defence said the 43-year-old former banker wanted to be free to contribute to the "healing process" in Rwanda. While acknowledging Kambanda's co-operation with prosecutors by providing 90 hours of taped interrogation, the judges said his participation in "the crime of crimes" was too heinous to impose anything but the maximum sentence.
"He personally participated in the genocide by distributing arms, making incendiary speeches, and presiding over cabinet and other meetings where the massacres were planned and discussed," the judgment read.
The defence had tried to paint Kambanda as merely a pawn of the military which appointed him prime minister. The court questioned that portrayal, noting that Kambanda toured Rwanda whipping up the killing of Tutsis with speeches and by instructing local officials to encourage massacres.
The judges were also sceptical of claims that the former prime minister is deeply remorseful for his role in mass murder. They noted that he failed to offer a public apology when invited to address the court.
"Kambanda has not provided any explanation for his voluntary participation in the genocide. Nor has he expressed contrition, regret or sympathy for victims in Rwanda even when given the opportunity to do so," the judges said. Kambanda's lawyer said he intends to appeal the sentence.
The chief judge, Mr Laity Kama, described Kambanda's life sentence as an important step to ending the climate of impunity which allowed mass killings across central Africa.
The deputy chief prosecutor, Mr Bernard Muna, denied that the court's failure to give Kambanda a lesser sentence in return for his co-operation will discourage others accused of genocide from pleading guilty. "I do not believe that the sole purpose of an accused pleading guilty is to get a lesser sentence. I think part of the reason for an accused to plead guilty is to unburden his soul . . . Mr Kambanda can sleep easier," he said.
While the former prime minister's imprisonment, and the tribunal's conviction earlier this week of a Rwandan former mayor, were welcomed by some survivors of the genocide, there is a widespread view in Rwanda that Kambanda has escaped lightly.
Had the former prime minister been tried in Kigali he would almost certainly have been executed.
Whether Kambanda even re mains in prison for life will depend in part on where he serves his sentence. Several European countries have offered to hold Kambanda in conditions very much more comfortable than those endured by the killers in Rwanda's badly overcrowded prisons.