HELSINKI, Finland (ABP) – A Finnish court has sentenced a former Baptist pastor
to life in prison for participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Francois Bazaramba, 59, was a pastor of the Baptist church in Nyakizu, near the city of Butare. Approximately 5,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group were slaughtered in April and May of 1994 in the Nyakizu area. Prosecutors claim he was an active member of an extremist group, comprising members of the rival Hutu tribe, that orchestrated the killings.
Supporters said they do not believe that Bazaramba, who had been director of the youth wing of the Union of Baptist Churches in Rwanda, was capable of the acts alleged against him. He moved to Finland in 2003.
Bazaramba, who sought asylum in Finland in 2003, has been in detention
since 2007. Finnish authorities refused to extradite him to Rwanda, fearing he would
not receive a fair trial and because Rwanda has the death penalty.
His attorney said
Bazaramba was not in a position to have carried out the killings and
claimed to have evidence that witnesses in Rwanda were tortured. Family
and church friends in Finland discounted the charges, describing Bazaramba as a good
man who helped other refugees fleeing Rwanda's civil war.
Matias Hellman, a liaison official of the International Criminal Court
for the Former Yugoslavia, told Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's leading
newspaper, that genocide cases are always difficult.
Hellman said the eyewitness testimony of surviving victims is extremely
important in genocide trials but that statements by victims are not
always reliable. Memories get distorted over the years, traumas change
mental images and there are cases in which people have made up false
accusations of war crimes. Still, Hellman said, eyewitness testimony
carries weight, especially if backed up by hard evidence like written
documents, video material and crime-scene investigations.
The charges against Bazaramba were brought by the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a Tanzania-based court based formed in
1997 to try the masterminds of the massacres. The allegations stem
largely from a report on the Rwanda genocide by the Human Rights Watch
organization in 1999. Bazaramba's name was not on a 1999 list of
genocide suspects, but his name was number 19 on a list of 93 Rwandans
living abroad published by the government of Rwanda in 2006.
Rwanda claims that Bazaramba worked alongside Nyakizu's ruthless mayor,
Ladislas Ntaganzwa, a hard-line ethnic Hutu wanted for genocide, to
secure weapons and lead patrols hunting down Tutsis. The murders in
Nyakizu came during a 10-day killing spree following the presumed
assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Hutus slew Tutsis across Rwanda during the period, with anti-Tutsi
sentiment inflamed by Hutu government officials and official broadcasts
blaming Tutsis for the president's death.
Eyewitnesses told Helsingin Sanomat in 2007 that Bazaramba
acquired weapons and led killers. One witness told the newspaper that he
got weapons from Eleazar Ziherembere, at the time general secretary of
the Union of Baptist Churches of Rwanda. Ziherembere fled Rwanda in 1994 and now works as area director
for Africa at International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches
USA.
Ziherembere told the newspaper in 2007 that the Human Rights
Watch report's claim that Bazaramba was a good friend of Ntaganzwa is
not true, because he was a close friend of the previous mayor, whom
Ntaganzwa deposed violently.
The trial, which lasted nine months, was Finland’s first for genocide. Bazaramba’s lawyers said he plans to appeal.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Previous ABP story:
Former Rwandan Baptist pastor on trial for genocide (9/2/2009)