A FORMER Rwandan minister has been sentenced to life in prison for her role in the 1994 genocide in that country, becoming the first woman to be convicted of genocide by an international court.
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, who was minister for family and women’s affairs in the Rwandan government, was found guilty of ordering the genocide and rape of ethnic Tutsi girls.
Five others, including her son, were also sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania.
Showing no emotion as the judgment was read out, Nyiramasuhuko was found guilty of seven of the 11 genocide charges she faced. They included conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide and “rape as a crime against humanity”. With the help of her son Arsene Ntahobali, a former militia leader, the tribunal found that she helped to abduct hundreds of ethnic Tutsis between April and June 1994. They were then assaulted, raped and killed in her home district of Butare in the south of the country.
Ntahobali also received a life sentence.
“Many were physically assaulted, raped and taken away to various places in Butare, where they were killed. During the course of these repeated attacks on vulnerable civilians, both Nyiramasuhuko and Ntahobali ordered killings,” said Judge William Sekule.
“They also ordered rapes. Ntahobali further committed rapes and Nyiramasuhuko aided and abetted rapes.” Nyiramasuhuko was accused of being instrumental in the formation of Hutu militia groups. Known as the Interahamwe, their mission was to kill as many Tutsis as fast as possible. After the current president Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front put an end to the genocide in 1994, the Interahamwe fled into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Nyiramasuhuko followed, but was arrested in Kenya in July 1997 and transferred to the tribunal.
The ruling comes 10 years after trials began at the tribunal. Since then, 82 people have been arrested and 67 convicted for their roles in a 100-day genocide that left 800,000, mainly ethnic Tutsis, dead.
Nine others have been indicted, but are still at large, said Danford Mpumilwa, a spokesperson for the tribunal. It is expected to finish work on the initial stages of cases by 2014, after which the local courts in Rwanda are not expected to handle any newer cases that come before it.
With the UN-backed tribunal into war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, the tribunal for Rwanda was the first international court since Nuremberg to try people for genocide.