Rwandan Handed Over to Tribunal
The brother-in-law of Rwanda’s late president has been handed over to the U.N. tribunal hearing cases connected with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, an official said Thursday.
Protais Zigiranyirazo, a member of Rwanda’s Hutu majority, is alleged to have ordered roadblocks set up where members of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority were killed with machetes and clubs after President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was mysteriously shot down April 6, 1994, said Tom Kennedy, a spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
The death of Habyarimana, a Hutu, set off the slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderates from the Hutu majority.
Zigiranyirazo, 63, who was handed over to the tribunal Tuesday, also is alleged to have ordered soldiers and Interahamwe militias to search homes and kill any Tutsis found, Kennedy said.
He faces a single charge of extermination as a crime against humanity.
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