Rwandan General Given 30 Years for Role in 1994 Genocide

The former Rwandan army chief of staff was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his actions during the country’s 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed.
Rwandan General Given 30 Years for Role in 1994 Genocide
File photo of Rwandan former army chief General Augustin Bizimungu near Goma in 1994. Bizimungu, who was arrested this week in Angola, has been transferred to the UN Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) facility in Arusha. Vincent Amalvy/Getty Images
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<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/51959104.jpg" alt="File photo of Rwandan former army chief General Augustin Bizimungu near Goma in 1994. Bizimungu, who was arrested this week in Angola, has been transferred to the UN Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) facility in Arusha.  (Vincent Amalvy/Getty Images)" title="File photo of Rwandan former army chief General Augustin Bizimungu near Goma in 1994. Bizimungu, who was arrested this week in Angola, has been transferred to the UN Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) facility in Arusha.  (Vincent Amalvy/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1803933"/></a>
File photo of Rwandan former army chief General Augustin Bizimungu near Goma in 1994. Bizimungu, who was arrested this week in Angola, has been transferred to the UN Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) facility in Arusha.  (Vincent Amalvy/Getty Images)
The former Rwandan army chief of staff was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his actions during the country’s 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed.

The United Nations tribunal, which was established to prosecute those responsible for the Rwandan genocide, found Augustin Bizimungu guilty of numerous crimes against humanity including of six counts of genocide.

The court found that Bizimungu had full control over his subordinates despite claims by his defense that he was not in control of the underlings who carried out the killings.

The tribunal also convicted three other senior Rwandan officials and gave 20-year sentences to Rwandan army battalion commander Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye and his subordinate Innocent Sagahutu.

The third official convicted was the head of the Rwandan gendarmerie but he will be released after the court deemed that he had already served enough time since his arrest in 2000, according to intelligence news agency, ISRIA.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) deals with the trials of those with the most responsibility for the genocide, thousands of minor members of the leadership are being tried in Rwandan courts or through traditional justice system, BBC reported.

The genocide, began when the plane of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was shot down April 6, 1994 . The Hutus accused an ethnic Tustsi group of shooting the plane and began a violent campaign to eradicate the Tutsi civilian minority
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