ARUSHA, Tanzania - A lawyer defending a Hutu militia leader accused of genocide in the 1994 massacre of minority Tutsis in Rwanda yesterday told the UN tribunal hearing the case that he would try to establish in the court whether a genocide took place. Mr Luc De Temmerman of Belgium, who is defending Georges Rutaganda, asked the tribunal in Arusha whether in fact a genocide took place or whether the Hutu majority was trying to defend itself against Tutsi rebels.
Mr Rutaganda (39) was vice-president of the Hutu Interahamwe militia, which was held responsible for massacres during the killing of about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. Among other things, he is accused of arming Hutu extremists in April 1994 and ordering the murder of Tutsi civilians with machetes, guns and grenades and by drowning. The prosecution alleges that some victims were forced to dig their own graves.
Mr De Temmerman said the defence's witnesses would testify that the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) organised massacres after the April 6th, 1994, killing of the Hutu president, Mr Juvenal Habyarimana. The killing of the president sparked massacres in which minority Tutsis were killed by Hutus. The RPF seized power in July 1994, putting an end to the slaughter.
The prosecution has said it will call 35 witnesses, including civilians, who survived the 1994 massacres to prove there was a genocide and that Mr Rutaganda took part in it.