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Photos
of victims of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide hang in the Kigali Genocide Memorial in
Kigali, Rwanda on April 7, 2012 ©Steve Terrill (AFP)
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The Dutch national
prosecutor said Saturday that two Rwandans living in the Netherlands accused of
participating in the country's 1994 genocide would be extradited to their
homeland.
AFP
report continues:
"Two
Rwandan residents of the Netherlands, a 40-year-old from Voorburg and a
57-year-old from Leusden, will be extradited to Rwanda today (yesterday)," the
prosecutor said in a statement.
Rwanda
had demanded the extraditions of Jean-Claude Iyamuremye and Jean-Baptiste
Mugimba in 2012 and 2013 respectively to face trial on charges of genocide and
crimes against humanity.
The
two are suspected of having been militiamen during a four-month massacre of
some 800,000 people, mostly from Rwanda's Tutsi minority, in 1994.
The
extraditions come after a lengthy legal battle. Dutch authorities had at first
approved the extraditions but they were blocked on appeal as judges doubted the
two would receive a fair trial. That ruling was later overturned in another
appeal.
Iyamuremye
is accused of having participated in a notorious massacre near the Official
Technical School (ETO) outside the capital Kigali on April 11, 1994.
According
to the website of Kigali's memorial centre, some 2,000 Tutsis and moderate
Hutus were killed that day near the school after Belgian UN peacekeepers left
the area.
Mugimba
is believed to have attacked Tutsis in a neighbourhood of Kigali.
The Rwandan genocide was triggered by the assassination of the country's president Juvenal Habyarimana, from the Hutu majority, whose plane was shot down.
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