A Rwandan court in Gikonko convicted 105 people of...

A Rwandan court in Gikonko convicted 105 people of involvement in the central African country's 1994 genocide, with 11 of them getting the death penalty.
Victims' relatives and survivors attended the redbrick court in the southern town to hear the verdict being handed down, as 73 genocide perpetrators dressed in pink prison uniforms were sentenced to life imprisonment, others to prison sentences of up to 25 years.
In the biggest such trial to date, a further 37 of the total of 142 were acquitted, some of them after having spent nine years in detention awaiting trial. Up to one million Rwandans were slaughtered in April and May 1994 in a campaign orchestrated by the then Hutu-led government to wipe out the country's Tutsi minority. Many Hutus were also killed, either in reprisals or because they refused to go along with the killings.
"I'm moved by the verdict. Finally the man who killed our two children has been punished," said Vedaste Nayinzira, a genocide survivor.
"The person who killed my children has been sentenced but they won't be brought back to life by the verdict," said a woman who asked not to be named. While several local dignitaries were on trial, a number were acquitted, including an Anglican priest and a policeman.
"Many of the guilty have been acquitted, so we will appeal a number of cases," the investigating magistrate's representative Apollinaire Gakombe said.
The Rwandan authorities first used mass trials, such as the current one in Gikonko, to deal with the backlog and then in June 2002 began setting up so-called "gacaca", or village courts, across Rwanda to bring the perpetrators to justice. But the Gikonko defendants had been arraigned before the gacaca courts were given jurisdiction in March 2001.
Those convicted had been charged with involvement in the massacre of around 50,000 people in the Gikonko district. Even defence lawyers said that the trial had to take place.
"When you try 142 people together, the rights of defence are occasionally going to suffer," said defence lawyer Valentin Akayez. "But given that some people have been waiting nine years to come to trial, this kind of group trial is the best solution."
The state prosecution service said that 6,500 people had so far been convicted of crimes linked to the genocide, with between 600 and 700 getting death sentences.
Twenty-three death sentences had so far been carried out, according to public prosecutor Gerald Gahima.