Nine sentenced to death after mass trial

A Kigali court has sentenced nine people to death for their part in the 1994 genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, news agencies reported on Saturday. Thirty other defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, 62 were given sentences of between four and 20 years, and 25 others were acquitted. The sentences came after Rwanda’s largest genocide trial to date, in which 126 suspects were accused of crimes against humanity and genocide, the BBC reported. The accused were charged in connection with massacres in the district of Kanzenze, at a church in Nyamata where several hundred refugees were murdered, AFP reported. The building has now become a memorial to the genocide. Some of the suspects avoided the death penalty by owning up to their crimes during the trial, which lasted for seven months, the BBC noted. Rwanda has so far tried about 3,000 genocide suspects, with more than 500 sentenced to death, yet there are still more than 100,000 people in Rwandan jails awaiting trial.