Genocide: Court upholds life terms for Rwanda ex- party bosses

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The United Nations-backed tribunal for Rwanda on Monday upheld the life sentences for two former heads of the ex-ruling party for genocide crimes committed in 1994, reports AFP.
Matthieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera, the former chairman and deputy of Rwanda's then-ruling National Revolutionary Movement for Development, had been handed life terms in 2011.
They were convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and for not having prevented or denounced crimes committed by the party's infamous youth militia, the Interahamwe, but had appealed the verdicts.
An estimated 800,000 people, mostly minority Tutsis, were killed in the genocide in just 100 days -- a rate of killing that was far faster than the Holocaust of the Jews in World War II.
"The Appeals Chamber, seated in open session, affirms the sentence of life imprisonment imposed by the trial chamber," appeals judge Theodor Meron said in his ruling.
Meron added that the two would remain in detention pending their transfer to a jail. It remains to be determined which countries the men will serve their sentence in.
Rwandan authorities welcomed the verdict.
"There is a feeling of satisfaction to see that justice has been done," said Alain Mukuralinda, spokesman for Rwanda's prosecutor general.
"One thing is important, that the court has upheld that when you hold a position of authority and that crimes are committed under that authority, you are responsible even if you didn't directly give orders," he added.
Ngirumpatse was arrested in Mali in June 1998 and transferred to Arusha the following month. Karemera was arrested the same year in Togo.

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