Rwandan priest is jailed for death of 2,000
Pastor Dale Morgan
Rwandan priest is jailed for death of 2,000*
By Mike Pflanz, East Africa Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:21am GMT 14/12/2006
A Catholic priest who's church was bulldozed with 2,000 people, mostly
women and children, inside during Rwanda's genocide was convicted
yesterday and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Athanase
Seromba, 43, guilty of two charges of genocide and extermination and not
guilty on two lesser counts. He stood impassively as the verdict and
sentence were read out. He had denied all four charges.
The priest is the first of three charged with genocide to be convicted
by the court, which sits in the Tanzanian town of Arusha. Seromba, a
Hutu, was a parish priest at Nyange Church in Kibuye, western Rwanda,
when the mass killings started in April 1994.
Some 2,000 Tutsis, many of them regular churchgoers in Seromba's
congregation, fled to the church seeking refuge as machete-wielding
gangs scoured the countryside hacking their victims to death.
According to the prosecution, the priest directed the Hutu militia which
"poured fuel through the roof of the church, while gendarmes and
communal police launched grenades and killed the refugees". He then
watched for three hours as the doors were locked and one after another
the walls were knocked down by the bulldozer until the roof caved in.
;
Survivors who managed to squeeze free were shot dead as they tried to
escape.
All that is left of the church are several large mounds of earth covered
in flowers and chunks of concrete.
The conviction is likely to refocus attention on the role of the Roman
Catholic Church during the genocide, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate
Hutus were killed in 100 days.
Last month, the tribunal sentenced a Catholic nun to 30 years in prison
for helping militias kill hundreds of people hiding in a hospital. Two
nuns were convicted in a Belgian court in 2001 for taking part in the
genocide.
Seromba fled to Italy after the genocide ended in July 1994. As Don
Anastasio Sumba Bura, he conducted services at the church of San Mauro a
Signa in Florence.
He only gave himself up to the tribunal in February 2002 under pressure
from Silvio Berlusconi, the then Italian prime minister.