The Court of Appeal will, on Monday, start hearing the appeal case of Ladislas Ntaganzwa, a former Bourgmestre (Mayor) of Nyakizu Commune (now part of Nyaruguru District) who was convicted of committing crimes of genocide against the Tutsi.
He was tried on first instance by the High Court Chamber for International Crimes in Nyanza and sentenced to life in prison in 2020, a decision that he decided to appeal against.
Ntaganzwa, 60, was initially found guilty on crimes of genocide, incitement to commit genocide, murder, and rape.
He is accused of masterminding the killing Tutsis in Nyakizu, the commune he led, including the 25,000 who were murdered at Cyahinda Catholic Parish where they had gone to seek refuge.
During the first instance trial, a number of witnesses testified against him accusing hims of his great responsibility in the Cyahinda Catholic Church attack which involved policemen, soldiers (brought to the venue by Ntaganzwa), Interahamwe militia, and Burundian refugees.
Ntagazwa was arrested in 2015 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and extradited to Rwanda in 2016.
He was one of the nine people indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) but had not yet been arrested by the time the UN court closed shop in 2015.
In 2012, the ICTR, as part of its completion strategy, decided to refer to Rwandan prosecution the case files of six of the nine major suspects who had remained at large.
These included Ladislas Ntaganzwa, Fulgence Kayishema, Charles Sikubwayo, Aloys Ndimbati, Ryandikayo, and Pheneas Munyarugarama.
The other three: Felicien Kabuga, Augustin Bizimana and Maj Protais Mpiranya would be tried by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).
Kabuga was arrested in France in 2020 and is currently being tried by IRMCT on counts including: genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and persecution and extermination – both as crimes against humanity.
For Bizimana, it came to be confirmed that he died in 2000, and similar news was confirmed for Protais Mpiranya, whom the ICTR confirmed to have died on October 5, 2006 in Harare, Zimbabwe.