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The effects of the genocide are still being felt in the region, in particular across the border in DR Congo. Some of the Hutu militias involved in the genocide fled to DR Congo, where Tutsi rebels, allegedly with some Rwandan backing, refuse to lay down their arms, saying they are being attacked by the Hutu fighters.

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Former army colonel Theoneste Bagosora has been convicted of instigating Rwanda’s 1994 genocide by a UN tribunal and sentenced to life in prison.

Bagosora and two co-defendants were found to have led a committee of Hutu extremists that plotted the massacre of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

It is the first time the Rwanda tribunal has convicted anyone of organising the killings.

More than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda’s genocide.

Along with Bagosora, former military commanders Anatole Nsegiyumva and Alloys Ntabakuze were also found guilty of genocide and given life sentences.

According to the indictment at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania, Bagosora and the two senior military officers all conspired to “work out a plan with intent to exterminate the civilian Tutsi population and eliminate members of the opposition”.

The tribunal rejected the defence’s argument that the killing was not organised, and therefore not genocide.

Brigadier Gratien Kabiligi, the former chief of military operations, who was on trial with Bagosora and the two other men, was cleared of all charges and ordered to be released from custody immediately.

In another verdict on Thursday, the Rwandan court sentenced Protais Zigiranyirazo, 57, to 20 years in jail for his part in the genocide.

Mr Zigiranyirazo, a brother-in-law of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, was accused of ordering Hutus to kill 48 people in two incidents.

‘Principal enemy’

Bagosora, 67, has been in custody since 1996, when he was arrested in Cameroon.

The prosecution said he played a key role in plotting to exterminate the Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and that he also set up the Interahamwe – gangs of Hutu extremists who carried out much of the slaughter.

Prosecutors said Bagosora assumed control of military and political affairs in Rwanda when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in 1994 – the catalyst for the genocide.

He is said to have distributed the arms and machetes that became the chief tools of the genocide.

The indictment alleges that he set out to “prepare the apocalypse” as far back as 1990.

The following year, Bagosora helped draft a document circulated within the army that described Tutsis as “the principal enemy”.

Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, head of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda at the time, described Mr Bagosora as the “kingpin” behind the genocide and said the colonel had threatened to kill him with a pistol.

The trial, which began in 2002, was expected to last two years. The tribunal is due to wind up at the end of 2009.

The effects of the genocide are still being felt in the region, in particular across the border in DR Congo.

Some of the Hutu militias involved in the genocide fled to DR Congo, where Tutsi rebels, allegedly with some Rwandan backing, refuse to lay down their arms, saying they are being attacked by the Hutu fighters.

Some 300,000 people have fled their homes in DR Congo this year because of this conflict.bbc

, Voice of a Nation

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