{The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which is scheduled to close at the end of the year, will make its appeal judgments on Monday in three trials involving five former Rwandan personalities, including the two highest officials of the former ruling party, APA learned Friday from a judicial source }
Two other cases involving seven are still pending before the Appeals Chamber.
The most awaited judgment will be delivered Monday in the trial of former chairman of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), Matthieu Ngirumpatse, and former vice-president of the party, Edouard Karemera.
Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2011 after being convicted of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
According to the judgment of first instance, they did not prevent and condemned the atrocities committed in 1994 by young people in their party, the famous MRND Interahamwe.
At the appeal hearing in February, lawyers for the two men asked the acquittal.
M.Ngirumpatse “did not have the power to exclude or punish anyone (…) A political party is different from a government or military structure,” stated the French lawyer Frederic Weyl, seeking acquittal.
For his part, the Attorney George Mugwanya reaffirmed that both appellants had “a common agenda, namely to kill Tutsis.” “They abused their position of authority within the MRND,” accused the Ugandan magistrate, arguing that they were acting “within the scope of a joint criminal enterprise.”
Opened in November 2003, the trial had undergone many delays due in particular to the health problems of Ngirumpatse.
Originally, the two leaders of the MRND were judged with the former party secretary general Joseph Nzirorera and former Education Minister Andre Rwamakuba, who was a member of an opposition party to President Habyarimana.
But Rwamakuba had finally had continued in a separate trial that led to his acquittal in 2006.
Nzirorera died of illness on June 1, 2010, when he was about to complete his defense.
Another former member of the MRND, the former Minister of Youth, Callixte Nzabonimana, will learn his fate on Monday.
Tried alone, Nzabonimana was also sentenced to life imprisonment May 31, 2012, after being found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The room has retained its stake in the company of other members of the government, a famous meeting on 18 April 1994 at Murambi in his native prefecture Gitarama (central).
In the judgment of first instance, this meeting has sealed “an agreement” between Nzabonimana and other ministers “to encourage the killing of Tutsis.”
The third case concerns Captain Ildephonse Nizeyimana considered close Juvenal Habyariman and also sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance.
At the time of the genocide against Tutsis in 1994, Captain Nizeyimana was responsible in charge of information and operations at ESO in Butare, in southern Rwanda.
June 19, 2012, he was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for many killings mainly in April 1994 in Butare and its surroundings.
The judge concluded that his criminal responsibility in particular for having authorized or ordered several killings in Butare (south), including that of Rosalie Gicanda, widow of the last king of Rwanda, Charles-Léon-Pierre Mutara III Rudahigwa.
Queen Rosalie Gicanda was a relative of the current president Paul Kagame. The officer has always protested his innocence.
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