RWANDA: Rwandan Court Sentences 11 to Death for Genocide

In Kigali, a Rwandan court has sentenced to death 11 people accused of taking part in the country's 1994 genocide, after 142 suspects were accused in the biggest ever such trial.

The court convicted 73 others to life imprisonment, 21 to between 1 and 25 years in prison and freed 37 others including a woman and a Catholic archdeacon, officials said.

The Friday ruling, in the village of Ginkoko in the southern province of Butare, met with mixed reactions.

"We welcome the decision but we will appeal against some of the acquittals," Rwanda's attorney general Gerald Gahima told Reuters on Saturday.

Those convicted, including teachers, farmers, former mayors and businessmen, were found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity when extremists from the Hutu majority massacred 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.

"The judges never took my testimony seriously. There was a lot of bias and I detest the outcome," Nsabimana Pascal, a former primary school teacher sentenced to death, told reporters.

Gahima said he expected courts in other parts of the country to speed up trials of genocide suspects. Over 100,000 genocide suspects are currently languishing in jails across Rwanda.

Rwandan authorities opted for mass trials to deal with the huge backlog of cases awaiting trial. Last year Rwanda introduced traditional community courts called Gacaca to relieve the pressure on the conventional justice system.

A Rwandan official told Reuters that up to 6,500 people had been convicted of crimes linked to genocide since 1994, with up to 700 receiving the death sentence.

However only 23 death sentences have actually been carried out, none of them in the last few years, he said. Others have been delayed by legal appeals and the need for formal approval of death sentences by Presidential Paul Kagame.