Singer jailed for role in genocide

A prominent Rwandan musician, Juvenal Masabo Nyangezi, has been jailed for six years for having associated with those who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, AFP reported. Nyangezi was found guilty of having joined a group of people who killed Tutsis in Gikongoro commune, southern Rwanda. The prosecution, which had sought a life sentence, said it would appeal against the ruling, the BBC added. Meanwhile, prosecutors at the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Friday targeted in court the musician, Simon Bikindi, whose songs were broadcast regularly on the “hate radio” Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) during the 1994 genocide. On Thursday, a prosecutor, Charity Kagwi questioned a prosecution witness in the ongoing media trial on the role of Bikindi’s songs in the genocide, the Hirondelle news agency reported. A protected witness said Bikindi’s songs referred to Rwanda’s history of antagonism between Hutus and Tutsis, or boosted the morale of soldiers in the former army when they were fighting guerrillas of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The witness was a technician at the state-run Radio Rwanda radio in 1994. Bikindi, who worked at Rwanda’s ministry of youth and sports up to 1994, is currently in exile in the Netherlands where he has asked for political asylum.