2 Rwandan Journalists Convicted in Genocide

A U.N. tribunal convicted a radio news director and a newspaper editor Wednesday for their role in promoting the 1994 Rwandan ethnic genocide and sentenced them to life in prison.

It was the first trial of media workers by an international court in more than 50 years.

In addition, a senior executive at RTLM, the radio station, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in the government-orchestrated massacres of minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus that killed more than 800,000 people.

The convictions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda were the first for broadcasters and publications promoting crimes against humanity since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi propagandists after World War II.

A three-judge panel ruled that Ferdinand Nahimana, former director of the Rwandan National Information Office and a founding member of the radio station, was fully aware of the power of his vitriolic broadcasts.

“You may have been motivated by your sense of patriotism and the need you perceived for equity for the Hutu population, but instead of following legitimate avenues of recourse, you chose a path of genocide,” Judge Navanethem Pillay said.

RTLM grew out of the newspaper Kangura, the main voice for Hutu extremism in Rwanda, which was edited by Hassan Ngeze, who also was sentenced to life in prison.

“Let whatever is smoldering erupt,” Ngeze wrote in the newspaper before the genocide. “It will be necessary then that the masses and their army protect themselves. At such a time, blood will be poured. At such a time, a lot of blood will be poured.”

Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, an executive at RTLM, was given a 35-year sentence but was credited for time served.