Denmark orders Rwandan deported on genocide charge

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (CNN) -- A Danish district court on Tuesday ordered the deportation of a Rwandan refugee to stand trial on war crimes charges stemming from his activities during the 1994 civil war in Rwanda.

The International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda had charged that Innocent Sagahutu, 38, was one of a group of army officers who ordered the 1994 assassination of Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers assigned to protect her.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were killed when rockets brought down a plane carrying the pair to peace talks in Tanzania. The three deaths sparked the genocide that killed 800,000 people -- most of them ethnic Tutsis, a minority to the Hutu majority in Rwanda -- in just 100 days.

Hutu-dominated army factions who opposed peace with Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RUF) rebels are widely believed to have been responsible for the deaths of Uwilingiyimana, Habyarimana and Ntaryamira. The genocide ended after the RUF drove the former Hutu government into exile.

Sagahutu, a former captain and vice commander of a Rwandan army battalion, was arrested in February in the Danish town of Skjern, about 250 kilometers from Copenhagen.

The Danish Justice Ministry ruled in March that the Rwandan could be expelled, but his attorney, Thomas Rordam, immediately appealed to a district high court.

CNN Danmark Correspondent Ann Thomsen contributed to this report.

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