Four stand trial for genocide

FOUR former Rwandan ministers went on trial yesterday charged with playing key roles in the 1994 genocide, including buying weapons and inciting the slaughter of about 800,000 people, a court spokesman said.

The UN tribunal in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha is keen to show progress in trying former top officials to counter Rwandan government criticism that it has been slow to bring the masterminds of the massacres to justice.

“The prosecutor will show that from April 9, 1994, wherever the ministers went on their campaigns, they were soon followed by blood-letting and displacement of Tutsi population,” said prosecution lawyer Paul Ng’Arua, referring to chief prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow.