KARONGI - Gacaca courts in Karongi District have started to auction houses of convicts who failed to compensate for property destroyed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

This is part of the efforts to dispose of all cases in category three, a gacaca official has said.  

Alphonse Ruzindana, the president of Gacaca in Bwishyura Sector, said over 100 houses have so far been auctioned.

The houses, he explained, mostly belong to those who were convicted of other genocide crimes and are in jail- without any other source of income to compensate survivors, as ordered by the courts.

"Most of those whose property we are selling off are immigrants who only shifted and committed the crimes outside their homes.

They possess nothing else apart from the houses they lived in,” Ruzindana told The New Times.  

Notorious former Interahamwe militias like Andrea Ruhezamihigo, Makuza Asumani and Andrie Hitabatuma are among those whose houses are on sale.  

The trio are accused alongside five others of raiding and destroying property during the Genocide, for which the  courts ordered them to pay up to over Rfw3.5m.

Ruzindana, added that another group of 12 convicts who destroyed Charles Kayibanda’s houses, before murdering him and his entire family has been ordered to pay Rfw15m. Their property is also on sale. 

Each of them is expected to at least part with Rfw1.25m to raise the amount.

Gacaca in the Western Province has up to the end of this month to finalise its pending cases.

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