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_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Rwandan nuns on trial
Courts claim new international scope
Two Rwandan Benedictine nuns went on trial in Belgium in April on charges of complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of 800,000 people. This is the first such case to go to trial outside the central African country itself.
Sisters Gertrude and Maria Kisito and two Rwandan natives face charges of murder and crimes against humanity. The nuns’ crimes were allegedly committed at their convent near the city of Butare.
The nuns have been living in a Belgian convent since being evacuated from Rwanda in 1994. They could face life in prison if they are found guilty of helping Hutu radicals kill more than 5,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who sought refuge in the convent.
As Mother Superior of the convent, Sister Gertrude Kisito allegedly refused to allow people who were fleeing the slaughter to take refuge in the convent, forcing them to go to a health clinic next door. She then allegedly called in Hutu soldiers, who used guns and machetes to kill at least 5,000 people at the clinic. Sisters Gertrude and Maria Kisito also are accused of bringing cans of gasoline to help set fire to the clinic’s garage and burn alive at least 500 other people who were locked inside.
The four suspects—the two nuns, university professor Vincent Ntezimana, and businessman Alphonse Higaniro—are the first defendants ever to be charged under a relatively new Belgian law that enables the country’s courts to try people for human-rights offenses even if the defendants are not Belgian natives and the atrocities were not committed inside the European country.
Rwandan Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo said he welcomed the Belgian trial as an effort to seek justice and punish the perpetrators of the genocidal killings. Still the Rwandan official had had some misgivings about the scope of the Belgian law and the consequences of a trial in a foreign country. “The jury will be made up of Belgian citizens without enough background information about the root causes of the genocide, its planning, and its execution,” he pointed out.