According to the Hirondelle News Agency in Arusha, Kigali businessman Laurent Magambo was sentenced in November 2009 to life in prison after having been found guilty of rape during the 1994 genocide.
The judgment was delivered by a gacaca court of Nyakabanda (town of Kigali), which found that Magambo had raped a young Tutsi woman who was eight months pregnant. After Magambo raped her, he handed her over to militiamen who also raped her.
The defendant pleaded not guilty.
The News Agency also reports that the survivor is now suffering from AIDS and could not attend the trial, so the court received her testimony in the hospital where she is being treated.
The gacaca courts, adapted from a form of Rwandan traditional justice, are tasked with trying suspected perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. These village courts, whose judges are elected from the community, can hand down sentences of up to life imprisonment, which is now the maximum penalty in Rwanda. To date, the courts have tried over one million people.
