Rebel convicted over Uganda tourist murders

A Rwandan rebel was today convicted of the murder of four tourists from Britain who were on a gorilla-watching trip nearly seven years ago.

Jean-Paul Bizimana, 31, could face the death penalty later this week for the killings at Uganda’s Bwindi National Park in March 1999.

The four Britons, as well as two Americans, two New Zealanders and a tour guide, were bludgeoned to death with axes and machetes by Hutu rebels in the attack.

At the High Court in the Ugandan capital of Kampala today, Judge John Bosco Katutsi said: “Members of the gang shared a common purpose of attacking the victims.

“Each of the members of the gang is guilty of murder. This man (Bizimana) was a member of that gang, and he is convicted accordingly.”

The group of 14 tourists was abducted while on a trip to track rare mountain gorillas at the remote rainforest sanctuary made famous in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, near Uganda’s borders with Congo and Rwanda.

Mark Lindgren, 23, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, Martin Friend, 24, from Orpington, Kent, Steven Roberts, 27, of Edinburgh, and Joanne Cotton, 28, from Essex, were among the victims.

Americans Rob Haubner and his wife, Susan Miller, and New Zealanders Michelle Strathern, 26, and Rhonda Avis, 27, who lived with her husband Mark in London, also died.

Bizimana, alias Xavier Van Dame, who was arrested in July 2004 near the Ugandan border with Rwanda, is due to be sentenced on Friday.

His defence lawyer, Norris Maranga, said he would appeal the guilty verdict.

“Justice has been made at this level but we are not satisfied. Simply being part of the gang does not mean he carried out the killings,” Mr Maranga said.

Three other Hutu rebels were arrested in March 2003 and have been sent to the United States to stand trial over the deaths of the two American victims.

The victims were rounded up and forced to march through the jungle during the attack, which devastated Uganda’s tourist industry.

Nine people survived, including a French diplomat who was given a note by the rebels warning Britain and the United States not to interfere with Rwanda.

Fiona Morley, a former catering manager from Edinburgh, was among those who escaped by hiding in bushes.

Bizimana and his co-accused are all former members of the Liberation Army of Rwanda, which was affiliated to the former Hutu regime in Rwanda.

The organisation is blamed for the genocide of more than a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.