In “Captain Nizeyimana Pleads Not Guilty for the Second Time,” the Hirondelle News Agency reports that Ildephonse Nizeyimana, who first pleaded ‘not guilty’ in October 2009 when he appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), again denied all charges against him in March 2010.
Nizeyimana, 46, was second-in-command of the Non-commissioned Officers School (Ecole des sous-officiers, ESO) in the southern town of Butare at the time of the 1994 genocide.
During a short hearing before presiding judge Dennis Byron, the prosecution read an amended indictment which adds 18 factual allegations to the charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and rape perpetrated by Nizeyimana’s men.
“I plead not guilty,” the accused answered quietly after the new indictment was read.
The trial will not begin before July.
Notably, Nizeyimana has been charged with the murder of several Tutsis, including the assassination of Rosalie Gicanda, the widow of the Mutara III Rudahigwa. The indictment further alleges that Nizeyimana helped draw up lists of Tutsi intellectuals to be killed, and that the Captain was “a member of President Habyarimana’s inner circle.”
Moreover, the indictment alleges Nizeyimana permitted men under his command to rape Tutsi girls and women, as part of a genocidal project. The ICTR is the first international court to have adopted jurisprudence positing that rapes can be constituent elements of a collective plan to eliminate in part or in whole a racial or ethnic group.
Nizeyimana was arrested in Kampala, Uganda on October 5 and transferred to the U.N. Detention facility in Arusha, Tanzania. He ran a small business in Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, before his arrest. Knowing he was wanted by the ICTR, Nizeyimana frequently changed his identity. He entered Uganda under the false name of Hitimana Kabogo.
Nizeyimana was on a list of the ICTR’s twelve most wanted fugitives.
Source: Hirondelle News Agency, Arusha, 5 March 2010
