Trial of genocide suspect begins Monday

A genocide suspect, Eliezer Niyitegeka, will go on trial on Monday before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Internews reported.

Niyitegeka, who served as Rwanda's information minister in the interim government between April and July 1994, was charged with murder, rape, and encouraging others to do likewise, Internet said.

He was arrested in the Waithaka suburb of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on 9 February 1999, and subsequently transferred to the tribunal's detention facility in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha. There he pleaded not guilty to six charges, including genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, murder and extermination, the agency reported. It noted that earlier the prosecutor's office had sought to have Niyitegeka put on trial together with seven other former ministers, but the court rejected the motion.

The prosecution had, however, successfully brought about an amendment to the indictment, thereby adding counts of "rape, direct and public incitement to genocide, complicity in genocide, as an alternative count to genocide and outrages against personal dignity as a war crime", Internews added.

It said that as information minister, Niyitegeka had controlled the Office of Information, which had included Rwandan state Radio and Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), both of which had broadcast appeals urging Hutus to kill Tutsis.

"Incitement to massacre the civilian population over the radio airwaves of RTLM and Radio Rwanda can be directly imputed to Eliezer Niyitigeka for his failure to control the programming of the radio broadcasts," the indictment stated.