ICTR: Munyakazi, Setako ruling set for this month

ARUSHA - The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) will later this month render its judgment in the case of former businessman Yusuf Munyakazi. In March this year, the ICTR prosecution asked the Chamber to uphold Munyakazi’s guilty conviction and substitute the 25 years jail term handed down to him earlier with life imprisonment. According to an ICTR statement sent to The New Times yesterday, the Appeals Chamber composed of Presiding judge Patrick Robinson, Mehmet Güney, Liu Daqun, Andrésia Vaz and Carmel Agius, will deliver judgment on 28 September 2011. The verdict will be broadcast live via the ICTR satellite. Munyakazi was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for Genocide and crimes against humanity (extermination) in June 2010. The 76- year old Genocide convict was specifically found liable of the killings of approximately 5,000 Tutsis, who took refuge at Shangi parish and another group of Tutsis housed at Mibilizi church on April 29 and 30, 1994. Munyakazi was arrested in May 2004 in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where he lived as an Imam. Meanwhile, the same chamber will on the same date deliver judgment in the case of former Rwandan military officer, Lt Col Ephreim Setako. During the appeal hearing early this year, the prosecution also requested the Chamber to substitute the 25 year jail term imposed on Setako, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. “Setako breached his position as senior advisor of legal affairs in the Ministry of Defence during the war and abused it. We ask the Chamber to grant our appeal and raise the sentence to life imprisonment, Prosecutor Deborah Wilkinson told the Chamber at the time. Setako was arrested in February 2004 in The Netherlands. His trial commenced on August 25, 2008 and closed on June 26, 2009. Ends

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ICTR: Munyakazi, Setako ruling set for this month