Arusha - An octogenarian cleric jailed for 10 years by a United Nations court for Rwanda's 1994 genocide was released on Wednesday, becoming the tribunal's first convict to be freed after serving his sentence.
Adventist pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana had been convicted along with his son, Gerard, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for aiding and abetting the genocide.
"The accused (is) the first ICTR convict to be released after serving his sentence," the court said in a statement released here at its headquarters in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
Ntakirutimana, 81, ex-head of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in western Rwanda, was the first clergyman convicted by the court for the genocide in which some 800 000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.
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He was convicted in February 2003 but given credit for time served in pre-trial custody in Arusha as well as in the United States where he was first arrested in 1996 and fought a lengthy battle against deportation.
Ntakirutimana and his son, a physician who was sentenced to 25 years, were accused of genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
Both had vehemently protested their innocence and the father was found guilty of lesser charges after convincing the court that he had not personally taken part in any killings.
The court said they had taken armed attackers to an Adventist church complex in Rwanda's western Mugonero area where unarmed, predominantly Tutsi men, women and children had taken refuge.
They were also accused of participating in pursuing and killing Tutsis fleeing extremist Hutu militia in the Bisesero hills in the western Kibuye region. The ICTR has convicted 26 genocide indictees and acquitted five.
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