Rwanda's defence minister, the highest-ranking suspect to appear before village courts investigating the 1994 genocide, today denied charges he armed and assisted the killers.
Major-General Marcel Gatsinzi was commander of southern Rwanda but defected to the victorious rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front in August 1994, shortly after it took power and ended the hundred days of slaughter.
He spent a month in exile in then Zaire before returning seeking reconciliation in the wake of the killing of some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus by Hutu extremists.
Maj Gatsinzi - a Hutu - testified before a crowd of about 5,000 people gathered in the Huye football stadium for a "gacaca" court, as the traditional tribunals are known.
"I didn't participate in the genocide, and I didn't support the killers. Even my wife, she is a Tutsi," he said as the crowd jeered and shouted that he was lying. The court president was forced to halt the proceedings until the clamour subsided.
"I could not save many people," Maj Gatsinzi added, saying he would have been killed and was already suspected of collaboration with the Tutsi rebels. Ten others testified at the hearing, until it was adjourned when darkness fell for reconvening at an undetermined date.
Gacaca, meaning grass, dispenses with the formalities of the normal court system, using venues like grassy knolls and relying on villagers' testimony against those suspected of involvement in the genocide.
A Hutu imprisoned for seven years for his role in the genocide testified that Maj Gatsinzi had helped arm him and others. "He gave us some guns to defend ourselves. I don't know why he wants to reject this responsibility," Alphonse Haborugira said, while denying that he killed anyone.
A Tutsi woman testified that she escaped the slaughter of hundreds of women lured to ostensible safety at a military training school in Huye then under Maj Gatsinzi's command. "How is it possible that the minister didn't know they brought the women who were left there?" Josephine Akimana said. "He could have saved a lot of people because he was the high commander."
The traditional courts were established to deal with a backlog of suspects awaiting trial in conventional courts, with more than 80,000 people languishing in prisons. An estimated 700 senior and low-ranking government officials including three members of parliament have been summoned to appear before the courts.