Rwandan army officer gets 25 years for genocide

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 25

A former Rwandan military officer accused of ordering the killing of up to 50 people was jailed for 25 years on Thursday by a U.N. court trying masterminds of the country's 1994 genocide.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, found lieutenant colonel Ephrem Setako, 60, guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and murder.

"The Chamber found that Setako ordered the killings on 25 April 1994 of 30 to 40 Tutsis at Mukamira military camp in Ruhengeri prefecture and around 10 other Tutsis there on 11 May 1994," the tribunal said in a statement on its website.

Setako, who was the head of legal affairs in Rwanda's defence ministry at the time, was acquitted of other charges of complicity to commit genocide, murder as a crime against humanity and pillage as a war crime.

He was arrested in the Netherlands on February 25, 2004, and transferred to a United Nations detention facility in Arusha the same year to face genocide charges.

In their indictment, prosecutors said Setako armed and trained militiamen and ordered them to kill Tutsis in several areas. Ethnic Hutu militia and soldiers butchered 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in just 100 days in 1994.

-Reuters