From www.timesonline.co.uk, as reported by David Charter in Brussels
A former Rwandan army major was found guilty yesterday of murdering ten United Nations peacekeepers in a planned attack that many believe helped to trigger the genocide that claimed more than 500,000 lives in the African country.
Bernard Ntuyahaga was convicted of luring the ten Belgian soldiers away from their guard on the Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who was then herself butchered by a machete-wielding gang.
Ntuyahaga was cleared of murdering the Prime Minister and will be sentenced today.
The murder of the ten soldiers has haunted Belgium because it led to the withdrawal of its peacekeepers from its former colony, leaving Hutu gangs free to carry out the genocide.
Relatives of the slain Belgians heard gruesome details in the Brussels court of how the peacekeepers were tricked into giving up their weapons and driven by Ntuyahaga to an army base. At the Kigali camp, the prosecution said there was a stage-managed revolt by Rwandan forces under Ntuyahaga’s command. The Belgians tried to find refuge in a hut, but were captured, lynched, beaten, slashed with machetes and shot.
The ten peacekeepers were due to take Mrs Uwilingiyimana to a radio station to make a broadcast appealing for calm after the plane of Juvenal Habyarimana, the Rwandan President, was shot down. Stripped of her escort, she too was killed and the mass killing of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began.
Ntuyahaga’s defence argued that he was a political scapegoat, who had only passed the Prime Minister’s residence by chance.
Christine Dupont, the widow of Christophe Dupont, one of the peacekeepers, said it was “a day we have been waiting for the last 13 years”.
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