March 17, 2003
The French government has agreed to allow people convicted in the Rwanda genocide to serve their sentences in France, the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda said Monday. France is the first European country to agree to provide prison space for those convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Jean Francois Lionnet, France's ambassador to Tanzania, signed the agreement Monday with tribunal based in Arusha in northern Tanzania, according to a tribunal statement. Lionnet said the agreement was an example of France's commitment to promote international justice.
The tribunal was set up in November 1994 to try the alleged masterminds of the 100-day slaughter earlier that year when more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed. The tribunal has convicted 10 people and acquitted one. It is currently holding 55 suspects. The maximum sentence the tribunal can hand down is life in prison.
Six of those convicted are serving their sentences in Mali, which signed an agreement with the tribunal in 2001. Benin and Swaziland have signed similar agreements with the tribunal. France will begin receiving those convicted once the agreement has been ratified by the French parliament.
Rwanda, which gained independence from Belgium in 1962, is one of eastern Africa's few French-speaking countries, but relations between Rwanda and France have been frosty since the genocide.
France supported President Juvenal Habyarimana's government, whose members orchestrated the killings. The spark that ignited the killings was the shooting down on April 6, 1994, of Habyarimana's French jet as it was approaching Kigali airport. Those responsible for shooting down the jet have not been identified
More Information on International Justice
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
