Ex-premier urges probe of genocide statistics

Rwanda's ex-prime minister, Faustin Twagiramungu, on Tuesday called for an investigation into the victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the Arusha-based Internews service reported. Twagiramungu, the first defence witness in the trial of the genocide suspects, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, and his son, Gerard, told the court that there was a need to investigate the exact number of those who had died in the April-June 1994 genocide in Rwanda. As prime minister from July 1994, he had attended the burial ceremonies of many genocide victims, Internews quoted Twagiramungu as saying. He noted that there had been a lot of confusion between the numbers of people alleged to have been at massacre sites, those killed and the number of the bodies buried after the genocide. He said that during the burial ceremony of those who had been killed at Kibuye stadium, western Rwanda, it had been announced that 80,000 people had sought refuge there. "What I know is that the biggest stadium in Rwanda is Amahoro stadium, built by the Chinese, and it can only hold 25,000. I know that the numbers we buried were not 80,000," Twagiramungu said. "I do not think you can bury that many in three hours. I do not even know if you can bury 2,000 in that time." He said that less than 2,000 bodies were buried at Mibilizi parish, in Cyangugu Prefecture, southwestern Rwanda, although the figure of the dead in the area had been announced as having been higher than 2,000. Twagiramungu added that it was inconceivable that classrooms in a primary school could hold up to 40,000 people, as certain eyewitnesses had told the press, Internews reported. "I am giving a parallelism here. I have been in crowded prisons, prisons built for 1,000, and housing 6,000, and it is incredible, there is no place even to stand, then you want to tell me that people fled into this tiny room and it contained 40,000! I think it is impossible," he said. "I am giving you these figures so that you can understand the capacity of people for exaggeration. I said earlier that we all bear responsibility for what happened. We never accounted for these deaths. If there were 80,000, where are the rest of the bodies? I think the only way is to hold investigations," he added. Twagiramungu was the prime minister-designate of Rwanda prior to the genocide, and served as prime minister between July 1994 and August 1995, when he resigned and fled to Kenya, and later to Brussels, Belgium, where he now resides. He was also the chairman of the Mouvement democratique republicain in 1994. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a former pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and his son, Gerard, a medical doctor, are jointly accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with events at the Mugonero church and hospital complex in Kibuye Prefecture, western Rwanda. Meanwhile, the second witness in this case, Jerome Nataki, another son of Ntakirutimana, had also testified on Tuesday, saying that neither his father nor his brother had ever owned a gun, held a gun, travelled in the company of militias or attended a political meeting of any kind, the independent Hirondelle news service reported. "My father was as dedicated to saving souls as my brother was dedicated to saving lives," Nataki, who changed his name from Ntakirutimana after acquiring US citizenship, was reported as saying. Nataki lived in Rwanda until July 1994, when he fled to Zambia and then to the US, Hirondelle noted. According to the prosecutor, an estimated 5,000 Tutsis were killed in the complex. Elizaphan and Gerard are accused of luring Tutsis to take refuge in the Mugonera church complex and later ferrying in militias and soldiers to kill them. At the end of June 1994, the first United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Rwanda, who had been appointed in May, confirmed that as many as 500,000 Rwandans had been killed since the beginning of April of that year.