Rwanda genocide, War crimes tribunal opens today
However, Theoneste Bagasora and his co-defendants are boycotting the proceedings. Bagasora and three other former officers refused to leave their cells in protest at what they said were delays by the prosecution in providing them with trial documents. All four have pleaded not guilty at a United Nations tribunal to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The indictment says that the four were among a group of senior officers who planned the extermination of the Tutsi minority for over three years to avert the mounting challenge to the Hutu majority's political dominance.
The indictment alleges that 61-year-old Bagosora fiercely objected to government concessions to Tutsi rebels in 1993 peace talks in Tanzania. It alleges that he left the negotiating table, saying that he was returning to Rwanda to "prepare the apocalypse".
Prosecutors say he took control of military and political affairs in Rwanda following a plane crash that killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April, 1994.
Defence lawyers have complained that Bagosora has been in jail awaiting trial for six years. They have accused the prosecution of delaying the preparation of key documents.
Eight genocide suspects have so far been convicted by the ICTR, but these trials have failed to unearth information on higher ranking officials involved in the conspiracy. Former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda was convicted in May 1998, but his "guilty" plea avoided the need for a long trial which could have shed more light on the plot.
Rwandans are observing a national week of mourning for the genocide victims, most of whom were members of Rwanda's Tutsi minority. The death of President Habyarimana triggered the massacres in which Hutu extremists and government soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
