On March 6, 2010, Augustin Mugemanyi, the former administrative and financial director of the Rwandan Prosecutor’s Office, will be tried on appeal before a Gacaca court in Kigali. He is to answer charges of rape and other sexual abuses during the 1994 genocide.
On 1 March 2010, the Assize Court of Brussels agreed to a new trial for Rwanda’s former Interhamwe leader, Ephrem Nkezabera, who was sentenced in absentia to 30 years’ imprisonment in December 2009. At that trial, the Assize Court had unanimously sentenced Nkezabera for war crimes, including murder and rape. It was the first time in Belgian judicial history that rape was considered a war crime.
The Hirondelle News Agency reports that the Assize Court of Brussels unanimously sentenced Ephrem Nkezabera, dubbed the ‘genocide banker’, to 30 years in prison for war crimes including murder and rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The Hirondelle News Agency reports that Kigali businessman Laurent Magambo was sentenced 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, which found that Magambo had raped a young Tutsi woman who was eight months pregnant.
A Quebec judge has sentenced Désiré Munyaneza, the first person charged under Canada’s war crimes legislation, to a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Munyaneza “chose to kill, rape and pillage in the name of the supremacy of his ethnic group, reminding us that every time a man claims to belong to a superior race, a chosen people, humanity is in danger,” the judge wrote in a 12-page ruling.
On 22 October 2009, the Hirondelle News Agency in Arusha reported that a Kigali gacaca court confirmed the life sentence for Martin Habimana, a prosperous businessman convicted of rape on his first hearing, June 29. Habimana, in his forties, hails from Nyanza (Southern Rwanda). He was convicted for the rape of a young Tutsi woman he confined on the pretext of protecting her from killers.
Tharcisse Renzaho, the former governor of Kigali, received a life sentence from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for inciting and participating in the killing of Tutsi during the 1994 genocide. The Trial Chamber also held that he incited sexual violence by encouraging the rape of Tutsi girls and women.
A Quebec court has found Désiré Munyaneza guilty of war crimes committed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the first conviction under a Canadian law that allows residents to be tried for crimes committed abroad.
