A Rwandan military tribunal today handed a life sentence to a former senior military commander and a Catholic priest over their involvement in the country's 1994 genocide, officials said.
Major-General Laurent Munyakazi was until his arrest in September 2005 a top commander of a Rwandan military division in the north-east of the country. His co-accused, Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, who was tried in absentia, was also sentenced to life after he was found guilty of complicity to commit genocide and rape.
"The evidence provided by the prosecution was sufficient to convince the court that the accused are guilty," the president of the military tribunal Karenzi Karake said. Prosecutors case had requested the death penalty for the two. But last month Rwanda embarked on a campaign to rally public support to abolish capital punishment. The tribunal found Munyakazi guilty of killing around 215 Tutsis at two catholic cathedrals in Kigali.
He was also convicted of the murder of 17 youths he picked up from another church in Kigali who later disappeared with no trace, and three people in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he had briefly fled to seek refuge. Munyakazi was a senior member of the former Rwandan army during the genocide, heading a military elite unit which was in charge of security at essential institutions in Kigali.
He was integrated into the current Rwanda army after the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. Munyeshyaka, the former head priest of St. Famille parish in Kigali, was accused of working with Munyakazi to commit the crime. He fled the country after the genocide and authorities believe he is in France. The court gave both men two weeks to appeal the verdict at the Rwandan Military High Court.