Prosecutors in Finland on Monday charged a former preacher at a Baptist church in Rwanda with genocide for his suspected role in the mass killings in the African country in 1994.
Prosecutors said that a pre-trail investigation had provided enough evidence to suggest that Francois Bazaramba had participated actively in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which over 800,000 people were killed.
"It is obvious according to the pre-trial investigation that the man has committed a crime of genocide in the municipality of Nyakizu in April and May 1994 with intent to destroy the Rwandan Tutsis partly or totally," the Finnish Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement.
The statement added that Bazaramba, a Hutu, was charged with 15 counts of murder. His trail will now begin in autumn, and it would be the first genocide trial in Finland. Bazaramba faces a life sentence if he is found guilty of the charges pressed against him.
Francois Bazaramba had arrived in Finland in 2003, and applied for asylum soon afterwards. He had worked as a Baptist preacher in the Finnish towns of Vaasa and Porvoo before his arrest in April 2007.
Rwanda accuses him of having played an important role in the massacre of 5,000 Tutsis in Nyakizu, and had requested the Finnish government for his extradition. However, Finland had rejected the Rwandan request in February over fears that Bazaramba may not receive a fair trail in the African country.
Finnish prosecutors had said then that decision was based on last year's ruling by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which halted the referral of three similar cases since it was not satisfied that the defendants would receive a fair trial in Rwanda.
They said that the suspect has been in custody since 2007, adding that he would be tried in Finland if the prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) charged him, as Finland permits the prosecutions for crimes against humanity wherever they are committed.
The ICTR, based in the city of Arusha in northern Tanzania, was formed in 1997 to try the most high profile of the Rwandan genocide cases. Till date, the tribunal has convicted 29 people and acquitted five.
It is estimated that the Hutu militias slaughtered some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which was triggered by the
assassination of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.
by RTTNews Staff Writer
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