Government releases 4,225 prisoners

The Rwandan government has released 4,225 prisoners who completed a one-month rehabilitation course on Sunday, the Rwandan news agency, RNA, reported.

The prisoners are among thousands of other genocide suspects who were granted provisional release under a presidential decree announced in 2003.

RNA reported that during the passing out ceremony at Kinyinya camp in the capital, Kigali, the executive secretary of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, Fatuma Ndangiza, urged the former prisoners to reconsider their conduct in the community, and to foster unity and reconciliation for all Rwandans.

The prisoners underwent solidarity courses in provinces of Gikongoro, Gisenyi, Ciangugu, Kibungo and Kigali City, RNA reported

In early March, the Rwandan government announced that it would free the common law criminals and at least half of the country's prisoners who had confessed to their role in the genocide.

Prosecutor General Jean de Dieu Mucyo told IRIN in March that at least 4,500 common law prisoners had been pardoned and released on 22 March in a bid to decongest the nation's prisons.

Those released then included the elderly and the sick, as well as those who had been in prison longer than the sentences they could face. Mucyo said those who confessed to participating in the 1994 genocide, in which the government estimates some 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed, would be released when they completed their rehabilitation course.

In February 2003, close to 25,000 prisoners who had pleaded guilty to participating in the genocide were provisionally released from detention.