The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sentenced a former soldier for 15 years after convicting him of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. The decision issued on February 11, 2010 follows Tharcisse Muvunyi’s retrial after he was found guilty of several acts of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and other inhumane acts and sentenced to 25 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2006.
In 2008, the tribunal’s appeals chamber set aside the convictions and sentence, but ordered a retrial that began last June of one allegation of direct and public incitement to commit genocide related to a speech Mr. Muvunyi gave in Butare prefecture in May 1994, in which he called for the killing of Tutsis, whom he referred to as snakes.
Mr. Muvunyi, 57, was formerly a lieutenant colonel in the Rwandan army. He was arrested in the United Kingdom in 2000 and transferred to the UN detention facility and transferred to Arusha, Tanzania.
The U.N. Security Council authorized the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994 in response to the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed within just 100 days that year.
(adapted from a UN Press Release)
(mew)