HELSINKI, Finland (ABP) – A Finnish court has sentenced a former Baptist pastor to life in prison for participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Francois Bazaramba, 59, was a pastor of the Baptist church in Nyakizu, near the city of Butare. Approximately 5,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group were slaughtered in April and May of 1994 in the Nyakizu area. Prosecutors claim he was an active member of an extremist group, comprising members of the rival Hutu tribe, that orchestrated the killings.

Supporters said they do not believe that Bazaramba, who had been director of the youth wing of the Union of Baptist Churches in Rwanda, was capable of the acts alleged against him. He moved to Finland in 2003.

Bazaramba, who sought asylum in Finland in 2003, has been in detention since 2007. Finnish authorities refused to extradite him to Rwanda, fearing he would not receive a fair trial and because Rwanda has the death penalty.

His attorney said Bazaramba was not in a position to have carried out the killings and claimed to have evidence that witnesses in Rwanda were tortured. Family and church friends in Finland discounted the charges, describing Bazaramba as a good man who helped other refugees fleeing Rwanda's civil war.

Matias Hellman, a liaison official of the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia, told Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's leading newspaper, that genocide cases are always difficult.

Hellman said the eyewitness testimony of surviving victims is extremely important in genocide trials but that statements by victims are not always reliable. Memories get distorted over the years, traumas change mental images and there are cases in which people have made up false accusations of war crimes. Still, Hellman said, eyewitness testimony carries weight, especially if backed up by hard evidence like written documents, video material and crime-scene investigations.

The charges against Bazaramba were brought by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a Tanzania-based court based formed in 1997 to try the masterminds of the massacres. The allegations stem largely from a report on the Rwanda genocide by the Human Rights Watch organization in 1999. Bazaramba's name was not on a 1999 list of genocide suspects, but his name was number 19 on a list of 93 Rwandans living abroad published by the government of Rwanda in 2006.

Rwanda claims that Bazaramba worked alongside Nyakizu's ruthless mayor, Ladislas Ntaganzwa, a hard-line ethnic Hutu wanted for genocide, to secure weapons and lead patrols hunting down Tutsis. The murders in Nyakizu came during a 10-day killing spree following the presumed assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Hutus slew Tutsis across Rwanda during the period, with anti-Tutsi sentiment inflamed by Hutu government officials and official broadcasts blaming Tutsis for the president's death.

Eyewitnesses told Helsingin Sanomat in 2007 that Bazaramba acquired weapons and led killers. One witness told the newspaper that he got weapons from Eleazar Ziherembere, at the time general secretary of the Union of Baptist Churches of Rwanda. Ziherembere fled Rwanda in 1994 and now works as area director for Africa at International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches USA.

Ziherembere told the newspaper in 2007 that the Human Rights Watch report's claim that Bazaramba was a good friend of Ntaganzwa is not true, because he was a close friend of the previous mayor, whom Ntaganzwa deposed violently.

The trial, which lasted nine months, was Finland’s first for genocide. Bazaramba’s lawyers said he plans to appeal.

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Previous ABP story:

Former Rwandan Baptist pastor on trial for genocide (9/2/2009)

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