Tribunal Reverses Decision to Free Rwandan Official

An international tribunal Friday reversed its decision to free a high-ranking Rwandan official accused of playing a leading role in the 1994 massacre of more than 800,000 people.

Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza will now stand trial on six counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, tribunal spokesman Tom Kennedy said. The tribunal’s appeals chamber, which sits in The Hague, unanimously ruled that Barayagwiza should remain in custody pending trial.

The U.N. chief prosecutor for Rwanda, Carla del Ponte, welcomed the ruling, saying the court’s earlier decision to throw out the case violated the rights of the victims, mostly minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

Barayagwiza was under indictment by the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda when the appeals judges, citing procedural lapses by prosecutors, threw out his case in November.

The decision outraged the Rwandan government, which temporarily suspended cooperation with Del Ponte and the tribunal.

Barayagwiza was political affairs director in Rwanda’s Foreign Ministry and an official of a hate radio station at the time of the genocide orchestrated by a Hutu extremist government.

In its ruling Friday, the appeals chamber reaffirmed that Barayagwiza’s rights were infringed during his prolonged detention in Cameroon, where he was held from March 1996 to October 1997, when he was finally transferred to the tribunal.

But, the judges said, there were other remedies, such as giving Barayagwiza a reduced sentence if he is found guilty.