Germany Arrests Hutu Rebels

originally published in the New York Times, United States

The leader of a Rwandan rebel group accused of being responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide was arrested Tuesday in Germany. The leader, Ignace Murwanashyaka, left, has presided over the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda since 2001. He was arrested in the town of Karlsruhe on Tuesday afternoon by German police officers on suspicions of war crimes and crimes against humanity. One of his deputies, Straton Musoni, was arrested simultaneously in Stuttgart. Mr. Murwanashyaka’s group, known as the F.D.L.R., has been hiding out in pockets of eastern Congo since being driven out of Rwanda by the current government after the end of the genocide, in which nearly a million Rwandan Tutsis were killed in three months.

Also on Tuesday, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda acquitted Father Hormisdas Nsengimana, who was a priest at a Catholic secondary school during the genocide, according to Reuters. The court said there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that he was guilty of killing Tutsi priests and others, Reuters reported. On Monday an appeals court, citing factual and legal errors, overturned the conviction of Protais Zigiranyirazo, who had been sentenced to 20 years for organizing a massacre that left about 1,000 dead.