Key Rwandan genocide suspect pleads not guilty

ARUSHA, Tanzania — A top suspect accused of forming secret death squads and orchestrating the killings of thousands during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to war crimes charges.

Idelphonse Nizeyimana, Rwanda’s former deputy intelligence chief, entered his plea at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda after being captured in Uganda earlier this month.

“I am not guilty,” Nizeyimana, 46, said each time the four counts of war crimes charges was read out to him. A trial date will be set later.

Nizeyimana is accused of ordering the killing of children, hospital patients, priests and even an elderly and revered African queen.

More than 500,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic minority and moderates from the Hutu majority were slaughtered during the 100-day Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Until his capture, Nizeyimana had been on the run for 15 years with a bounty on his head. He was believed to have hidden in the jungles of eastern Congo, where he belonged to a Rwandan Hutu militia called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda that continues to commit atrocities.

The United States had offered a $5 million reward for the capture of Nizeyimana. The reward was offered as part of a program to pursue terrorists and those who have committed crimes against humanity.

In recent weeks, the fugitive had sent emissaries to a U.N. base in Kimua, Congo, to negotiate turning himself in. The discussions collapsed when Nizeyimana suggested the bounty on his head be given to his family if he surrendered.

During the genocide, Nizeyimana was alleged to have formed secret units of soldiers that executed prominent Tutsis, including Queen Rosalie Gicanda, who was in her 80s, according to his indictment.

The Rwandan monarchy had ended decades before the genocide, but Gicanda remained a revered and symbolic figure for Tutsis. Soldiers hauled her and others from her house in Butare and shot them behind the National Museum.

He is the second high-profile genocide suspect to be arrested in the past two months. A former mayor, Gregoire Ndahimana, appeared at the tribunal in Tanzania in September after being captured in Congo in August.

There were 11 alleged masterminds of the genocide still at large. The most prominent is Felicien Kabuga, who allegedly financed Hutu militias and funded the radio station that broadcast hate speeches against Tutsis.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has delivered judgments on 39 people, including six acquittals.

The genocide was sparked when a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it approached Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, in April 1994. The slaughter ended when Paul Kagame led a group of Tutsi rebels to overthrow the Hutu government. Kagame is now Rwanda’s president.