Rwandan journalists jailed for role in massacre
Three Rwandan journalists have been jailed for inciting violence during the 1994 massacres.
It is estimated that 800,000 people were killed in the massacres, in which Hutu extremists carried out atrocities and murders over a period of three months against ethnic Tutsis and some moderate Hutus.
Two of the men, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, were the founders of the Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines (RTLM). The radio station incited Hutus to ‘crush the cockroaches’ and published names and locations of those who should be killed.
They were sentenced to life and 35 years in jail respectively, with a third man Hassan Ngeze who edited an extremist magazine sentenced to life.
The judge at the war crimes tribunal in Tanzania, Judge Pillay said the ‘RTLM broadcasts was a drumbeat calling on listeners to take action against Tutsis.’
‘RTLM spread petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it would be able to set fire to the whole country.’
Commenting about the convictions on BBC Radio Four, the current Attorney General in Rwanda welcomed the sentences, describing the men as ‘the brains behind the genocide’.
