The supreme court Friday sentenced Umuvugizi editor Jean Bosco Gasasira to two and a half years in jail, after finding him guilty of inciting civil disobedience and insulting the president.
Gasasira was acquitted by a lower court in September but the prosecutor appealed against the acquittal and asked for a 10-year sentence.
“The supreme court found him guilty of inciting civil disobedience, and insulting the head of state and sentenced him to two years and six months in prison,” a source at the court said.
Umuvugizi was suspended for six months on 13 April 2010. As tension mounted in the run-up to the August 2010 presidential election, Gasasira went into exile in order to continue working, and launched an online version of the newspaper.
In June 2010 Jean-Leonard Rugambage, Umuvugizi’s deputy editor, was shot and killed at the gate of his home in Kigali.
Two men have been jailed for life for the killing but rights groups have charged that the authorities were behind it, a claim they have repeatedly dismissed.
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