{{Umurabyo journalists, editor and a reporter have appealed before Supreme Court this Monday over their sentence of 17 and 7 years for Genocide denial and inciting civil unrest.}}<\/p>\n
Agnes Uwimana Nkusi, the editor of the Umurabyo a monthly local tabloid, was convicted in February 2011 of defamation, causing divisions and denying Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and sentenced 17 years in jail. <\/p>\n
Saidati Mukakibibi, the Umurabyo reporter, was also found guilty of incitement to civil disobedience and handed seven years in prison. <\/p>\n
“The judgment was kind of out-of-pace with the rest of the policies Rwanda is developing,” Nani Jansen of the London-based Media Legal Defense Initiative, who is part of the seven-member team representing Nkusi and Mukakibibi, said Monday.<\/p>\n
“The country is claiming they want to promote freedom of press, have an open, democratic society but to do that you have to have a strong media,” Jansen said. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors had asked for a 33-year sentence for Nkusi and 12 years for Mukakibibi. <\/p>\n
The charges stem from various articles published last year criticizing land reforms and the local grass-roots courts, known as gacaca, trying genocide suspects. <\/p>\n
Lead defense counsel is London-based attorney John Jones and the legal team also includes lawyers from London-based freedom of speech group Article 19 and Brussels based Lawyers without Borders. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Umurabyo journalists, editor and a reporter have appealed before Supreme Court this Monday over their sentence of 17 and 7 years for Genocide denial and inciting civil unrest.}} Agnes Uwimana Nkusi, the editor of the Umurabyo a monthly local tabloid, was convicted in February 2011 of defamation, causing divisions and denying Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[158],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-b_igi_adm1n"],"bylines":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"contributors":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}