OPJDR IS A NON-PROFIT AND APOLITICAL ORGANIZATION. ITS MISSION IS TO PROMOTE THE RESPECT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, CULTURAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN RWANDA AND IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION OF AFRICA

 

 

 
Belgian priest pleads innocence in Rwanda genocide
11 Sep 2005 17:52:48 GMT
 
Source: Reuters
 
By James Munyaneza
 
KIGALI, Sept 11 (Reuters) - A Belgian priest accused of inciting people to participate in Rwanda's 1994 genocide pleaded his innocence on Sunday before a traditional court.
 
"I was shocked when I was arrested. My conscience tells me that I am innocent, I loved Rwanda ever since I came here, and mostly Tutsis," Guy Theunis told a "gacaca" or people's court.
 
Rwandan authorities arrested Theunis, a member of the Catholic order of the "White Fathers" and missionary in the central African country from 1970 until 1994, on Tuesday as he waited in Kigali's airport lounge for a flight to Belgium.
 
He is the first European arrested by Rwanda on genocide accusations but not the first to be charged for the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by extremist Hutus.
 
Dressed in the pink prison garb of Rwandan inmates, Theunis heard more than 20 people testify against him in the gacaca court, a community-based justice system authorities have set up to clear a backlog of genocide cases.
 
Prosecutors say he published articles in the Kangura newspaper that encouraged Hutus to take part in the killing.
 
A Belgian journalist pleaded guilty to similar charges before a U.N. court in 2000 and is serving a 12-year sentence.
 
Ex-priest Jean Damascene Bizimana told the court in the capital Kigali he had heard Theunis talk of future Tutsi deaths.
 
"In 1992 you found me in Switzerland and I asked you about the murder of Tutsis in Bugesera (in southern Rwanda). You answered me that if RPF (the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army) did not stop fighting, more ethnic Tutsis would be killed in other areas," he said.
 
CASE MOVES TO HIGHER COURT
 
A leading human rights activist, Tom Ndahiro, accused Theunis, together with Father Jef Vleugels, of sending frequent "misleading" faxes to their order in Europe.
 
"These faxes misrepresented what was going on in Rwanda, and this to a certain extent explains the indifference the West showed during the genocide. Their reports were the source of information to the whole world," Ndahiro said.
 
Presiding judge Jean Raymond Kalisa questioned Theunis, who left Rwanda in 1994 at the time of the genocide, about articles "inciting hatred" that he published in Kangura.
 
But Theunis, speaking the local Kinyarwanda language, denied all charges, saying he was following instructions of other priests when he signed faxes and wrote press reviews.
 
He denied he knew genocide was in the offing but said he was aware there would be "great problems."
 
Of all the witnesses, only Allison des Forges, a senior adviser on African affairs with the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, defended the accused, saying he worked with them on unearthing human rights abuses in Rwanda before the genocide.
 
More than 1,000 people including politicians, human rights activists and diplomats, braved scorching weather to attend the day-long hearing in the dusty St Famille primary school grounds.
 
Judge Kalisa ruled that the case should be moved to a conventional court of law, rather than a traditional "gacaca", given the seriousness of the charges. "We have found out that we are incompetent to undertake his case," he said.