Prosecutors seek life for sisters without mercy

Belgian prosecutors today demanded life sentences today for two Benedictine nuns convicted of genocide in Rwanda.

It was a landmark trial in Brussels that human rights campaigners hailed as precedent for legal action against suspected war criminals wherever they may hide.

The nuns fled to Belgium Rwanda’s former colonial ruler after the rebels took control of the country in July 1994 and put an end to the killings of Tutsis.

Sister Gertrude and Sister Maria Kisito were found guilty of all the counts of homicide against them stemming from several days of slaughter at their convent at Sovu, in southern Rwanda, where up to 7,000 people were burned and butchered to death.

Prosecutors said the two Benedictine nuns encouraged and collaborated with the Hutu mob that repeatedly attacked Tutsi’s seeking shelter at the Sovu convent in the green hills of southern Rwanda.

Witnesses including some fellow nuns told how the two defendants called in militias to clear the desperate Tutsis from the convent grounds.

They were accused of supplying petrol to the mob that burned 500 people to death as they cowered in the convent’s garage, and of guiding the killers to the hiding places of doomed Tutsi men, women and children.

Also convicted were a former Rwandan government minister and a university professor. The prosecution also sought life sentences for them

The two men were accused of helping plan and carry out killing of members of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority during the 13 week orgy of violence in 1994.

After returning the guilty verdicts early today, the jury returned to the Brussels court in the afternoon to decide on sentences.

Chief prosecutor Alain Winants told the jury: ‘‘You will hear calls for clemency from the defence team.

‘‘I ask you, Did the victims receive any gestures of clemency or pity? No, none at all.’’

Defence lawyers argued that heavy sentences would harm efforts to heal the still open wounds between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.

‘‘A life sentence would be the negation of any hope of reconciliation,’’ Serge Wahis told the jury.

More than 500,000 people were killed in 100 days of killing organised by the former Hutu government of Rwanda. Tutsi-led rebels stopped the genocide in July 1994 when they seized control of the country.

The trial, which lasted almost eight weeks, was the first in which a jury of ordinary citizens had sat in judgment of war crimes committed in another country. A 1993 Belgian law gives local courts jurisdiction over violations of the Geneva Convention on war crimes, no matter where they occurred.

‘‘This is a big step forward for international justice. It shows that such a trial can be organised, that you can have a fair trial for events that happen on the other side of the world,’’ said Reed Brody, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.

‘‘Justice has been done,’’ Rwandan Attorney General Gerald Gahima, whose office assisted Belgian investigators, told The Associated Press in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

‘‘This is one of a handful of countries taking a stand to make people accountable for their actions seven years ago,’’ he said. ‘‘But there are many other suspects still living in Belgium and other nations and authorities have yet to take action.’’

Relatives of genocide victims hugged and wept quietly when the verdicts were given.

‘‘They have given a human face to people that were killed like animals,’’ said Marguerite Lens-Nyirajhninka, who said she had lost all of her family in the Rwandan genocide. ‘‘Today, we can feel our humanity has been recognised.’’