Reuters:

Two Rwandan journalists were jailed for life and a third was sentenced to 35 years on Wednesday for fanning the flames of a 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people, a U.N. tribunal spokesman said.

The verdict ends a landmark three-year trial that heard how the media played a major role in inciting extremists from the Hutu majority to carry out the 100-day slaughter of ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

“All three defendants were found guilty of genocide, incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity,” International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda spokesman Bocar Sy told Reuters from the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha.

Ferdinand Nahimana, 53, a founding member of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines (RTLM), was sentenced to life in prison along with Hassan Ngeze, 42, owner and editor of the Hutu extremist newspaper Kangura.

Life in prison is the most severe penalty the tribunal can hand down.

…

“The conviction…is a very important development because it shows that the responsibility for the genocide is not limited to those who did the actual killing,” he said. “Those who spread the message through the media and told the ordinary people to kill are far worse than people who followed their orders.”

Speech kills too.

Posted in uncategorized on December 3rd, 2003 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |