Number of genocide trails to rise sharply

Rwanda's prosecutor general, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, predicts a sharp rise in the number of suspects to go on trial for the country's 1994 genocide. At present 80,000 detainees are awaiting trial.

"We now estimate the figure to be between 500,000 and 600,000," he told IRIN on Friday in Kigali, the capital.

Most of the suspects are still at large.

"The figures were drawn up basing on [recent] information collected from the first phase of gacaca trial runs," he said, referring to the traditional community courts system introduced in 2001 to ease pressure on the national judiciary.

Gacaca courts are meant to give citizens, suspects and families of victims the opportunity to face each other and talk about want happened during the 100-day genocide; in front of a panel of locally-elected judges who can then issue verdicts.

Rwanda decided to turn to gacaca courts to speed up the trial process but many survivors of the genocide have criticized the courts for being too lenient and too slow in delivering justice.

So far, 750 of the 10,000-gacaca courts have started trials and all of them are still in the pre-trial phase identifying and listing victims and suspects.

Of the estimated 500,000 cases, only about 50,000 fall under the category of masterminds of the genocide and only they are to be tried by the national courts.

Mucyo termed the increased number of cases "too big" and said the Rwandan government would have to redesign its strategy for dealing with the problem.

"We do not, of course, have the space to detain all these culprits. We will have to come up with new mechanisms," he said.