Interahamwe man gets 20 years from the Hague

The Hague has sentenced a Rwandan to 20 years for his role in killing two Tutsi mothers and at least four children during the 1994 genocide.

The sentence is a pointer to the supremacy of international jurisdiction over crimes against humanity.

Joseph Mpambara, a former Interahamwe member, was also convicted of torturing a German doctor, his Tutsi wife and their two-month-old son after detaining them at a roadblock as they tried to flee the country.

Mr Mpambara, 40, a Hutu, was, however acquitted of other charges such as massacre of hundreds of Tutsis hiding in the Seventh Day Adventists complex, and rape.

Mr Mpambara was a member of the armed wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development during the genocide that left an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead.

He fled to the Netherlands and requested asylum in 1998. But his application was denied because Dutch immigration officials suspected he had been involved in the genocide.

He was arrested in 2006 following a warrant issued under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Under Dutch law, Mr Mpambara could be tried in the country because he was in the Netherlands at the time of his arrest.

The Netherlands — along with Belgium and France — agreed to try on their soil individuals prosecuted by the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and transferred, within the framework of the completion strategy, to national courts.

The Hague judgement happened in tandem with another by the semi-traditional Gacaca Appeals Court that meted out the maximum life imprisonment to Sebastien Muhizina for genocide. 

Mr Muhizina, 40, was deputy mayor of Butamwa commune and an Interahamwe militia leader.

The Gacaca court found him guilty of planning and organising genocide, execution, supervision and incitement to genocide by holding multiple meetings.

He was also found guilty of compiling a list of Tutsis to be killed, recruitment and training of militiamen, distribution of weapons and complicity in the murder of several families in Butamwa.

According to the judgment, he had visited the entire Butamwa commune before April 1994 for “sensitisation on the genocide.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations Under Secretary General for Legal Affairs and UN Counsel, Patricia O’Brien, visited the ICTR to discuss the implementation of the court’s exit strategy.