A former Rwandan minister for women’s empowerment Friday became the first woman to be found guilty of genocide and incitement to rape by an international tribunal. Judges at the UN court for Rwanda sentenced Pauline Nyiramasuhuko to life in prison for genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and rape.
“For these crimes, and considering all relevant circumstances, the chamber sentences you Pauline Nyiramasuhuko to life imprisonment,” said presiding judge William Hussein Sekule. Nyiramasuhuko was found guilty on seven of the 11 genocide charges she faced for atrocities committed in Rwanda’s southern Butare region in 1994. “Pauline Nyiramasuhuko conspired with other members of the interim government to commit genocide in Butare,” the judge said.
“She ordered rape at the Butare prefecture office. She had superior responsibility on the Interahamwe (militia, which she ordered) to commit the rapes at the Butare prefecture.” The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), formed in late 1994, is trying the masterminds of Rwanda’s genocide in which some 800,000 people, essentially minority Tutsis, were killed over 100 days.
The former minister’s son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, who at the time of the genocide led militia groups in Butare, was also sentenced to life for crimes including genocide, extermination and rape as a crime against humanity. Ntahobali was found guilty both of carrying out rape and of ordering other militiamen to rape. The judges followed the recommendations of the prosecution, which had, in their summing up in 2009 asked for life against both Nyiramasuhuko and her son.
