ZCZC
BFF-71
SWEDEN-RWANDA-GENOCIDE-TRIAL
Swede jailed for life over Rwanda genocide
STOCKHOLM, June 27, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A Stockholm court on Wednesday
sentenced a Swedish man of Rwandan origin to life in prison for participating
in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Theodore Tabaro, 49, was sentenced by the Stockholm district court for
“genocide” after he was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and
kidnappings of the Tutsi minority.
He was acquitted of rape due to lack of evidence.
The incidents occurred between April-May 1994 in Rwanda’s southwestern
sectors of Winteko, Nyakanyinya and Mibirizi, according to the verdict, seen
by AFP.
Tabaro participated in an attack against a Nyakanyinya school in which
hundreds of people, including women and children, had been ordered to seek
refuge.
The court said he, along with other culprits, “threw hand grenades at the
building” and “shot and stabbed” civilians.
Eight hundred people, many of them children, were killed or seriously
injured.
He also participated a few days later in an attack against a monastery
in Mibirizi.
Investigators and prosecutors in the case interviewed dozens of witnesses
and survivors in Rwanda, Europe and North America.
At least 36 deaths and seven rape victims were identified during the
investigation. Sixteen of the 30 survivors and relatives of victims who
lodged the case against Tabaro, will be compensated, the court said.
Tabaro was arrested in October 2016 at his home in Orebro, 160 kilometres
(100 miles) west of Stockholm. He arrived in Sweden in 1998 and was
naturalised in 2006.
In 2014 and 2016, Sweden sentenced two other Rwandan naturalised Swedes,
Stanislas Mbanenande and Claver Berinkidi, to life in prison for
participating in the Rwandan genocide.
Triggered after the assassination of Rwandan President Hutu Juvenal
Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, the genocide claimed 800,000 lives in three
months, mainly among the Tutsi minority, according to UN figures.
BSS/AFP/RY/1750 hrs