Rwanda genocide: Kanyarukiga guilty of church massacre

A Rwandan businessman has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in destroying a church in which 2,000 Tutsis were sheltering in 1994.

A UN tribunal found Gaspard Kanyarukiga guilty of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity.

A court spokesman said Kanyarukiga was found to have assisted in grouping Tutsis in the church before calling for it to be destroyed.

Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the 1994 genocide.

Kanyarukiga, 65, had denied the charges.

He was arrested in South Africa in July 2004 and transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the Tanzanian town of Arusha.

He is the second person to be convicted of the massacre at the Notre Dame de la Visitation Catholic church in Nyange.

The church's priest Athanase Seromba was sentenced to life in prison in 2008.

- BBC