Rwandans Guilty Of Genocide

Two Hutu nuns and two other Rwandans were found guilty early Friday of war crimes during the 1994 genocide in their central African nation, in a landmark Belgian trial.

Sister Gertrude and Sister Maria Kisito were convicted by the jury of most of the counts of homicide against them.

The two other defendants, university professor Vincent Ntezimana and factory owner Alphonse Higaniro, also were convicted on a number of counts in a trial which human rights activists hope will become a precedent.

The trial, which lasted almost eight weeks, was the first in which a jury of ordinary citizens had sat in judgment of war crimes committed in another country.

A 1993 Belgian law gives Belgian courts jurisdiction over violations of the Geneva Convention on war crimes, no matter where they were committed.

"This is a big step forward for international justice. It shows that such a trial can be organized, that you can have a fair trial for events that happen on the other side of the world," said Reed Brody, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.

Several countries, including Canada, watched the trial closely as a test case for future action to deter war criminals from seeking sanctuary abroad.

The defendants were not present when the president of the jury read the verdict. They were scheduled to return to the courtroom later Friday for sentencing. They face a maximum of life imprisonment.

The judge also was expected to rule on 12 of the 55 counts in which the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

The jury, which deliberated for eleven hours until early Friday (late Thursday ET) morning, delivered not-guilty verdicts for only four of the 55 counts.

The packed public gallery included many Rwandans. The guilty verdicts were met with anger by a group of Hutu youths, but relatives of the genocide victims hugged, smiled or sobbed quietly.

"They have given a human face to people that were killed like animals," said Margeritte Lens-Nyirajhninka, who said she had lost all of her family in the Rwandan genocide. "Today, we can feel our humanity has been recognized."

The charges against the two Hutu nuns stemmed from attacks by militia mobs in April and May 1994 on their convent at Sovu in which up to 7,000 Tutsis are estimated to have perished.

The prosecution claimed the two encouraged and collaborated with the killers, even supplying them with gasoline to burn a garage where some 500 people were hiding.

Their lawyers rejected that, claimed witnesses lied and insisted the nuns were innocent bystanders, unable to halt the slaughter.

Sister Gertrude, 42, also allegedly forced refugees to leave her convent and go to a nearby health centre. There they were massacred by Hutu militia using machetes, guns and grenades.

The two male defendants also denied the charges.

They were accused of being Hutu extremists who virulently opposed proposals to share power with Tutsi rebels and responded by helping plan and carry out the genoide in their southern region.

Prosecutors said Ntezimana had drawn up a list of Tutsi families trying to escape from Butare, knowing the list would be used by Hutu extremists to hunt them down.

Higaniro was found guilty of ordering the death of a Tutsi family of eight.

The four fled to Belgium — Rwanda's former colonial ruler — after the rebels took control of the country and put an end to the killings of Tutsis.

More than 500,000 people were killed in 100 days of killing organized by the former Hutu government of Rwanda. Tutsi-led rebels stopped the genocide in July 1994 when they seized control of the country.

Both Belgium and the Catholic church were criticised for dragging their feet over trying war crimes suspects and for keeping silent during the genocide.

Up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus may have been exterminated during the three-month carnage, often described as the 20th century's third worst genocide after the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany and the Ottoman Turk massacre of ethnic Armenians in 1915.

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